Kiyomi Baird I am a Japanese American artist. I was born in Arizona and grew up in California. My father gave me a box of artists materials when I was 3. Making art was a daily activity and eventually a way of life. I attended UC Berkeley and worked part time in the Metallurgy Department. There I discovered another universe in textures and patterns in a hair line metal fragment through the electron microscope. That shift in consciousness was the gateway to my artist’s path. Years later I moved to Tokyo and felt a deep resonance with Japanese culture and aesthetics. I realized that aspects of myself and my art are Japanese. I believe this cultural duality, the Eastern search inward toward stillness and the Western drive outward through exploration, is the source of a dynamic tension I feel in my life and express in my art. I create abstract spaces and forms that explore the movements of the cosmos and of the human spirit. Both dimensions…physical and spiritual…are infused with the same universal life force which expresses itself through a variety of elemental shapes. My work flows naturally without planning from my unconscious, personal and collective, and strives to reach a similar depth in the observer. I try to show how these elements move in time and space toward balance. I work with symbols, not signs, because I want to evoke feelings and experiences in the observer, not messages. The spheres I often use can be seen as conceptual monads of the mind or physical bodies of the galaxies. The cosmic dance is the same. I hope my work can serve as portals to the universe and sanctuaries to the soul for experiencing the oneness of both.