Wendy Maruyama
“If a viewer can take away or gain something new from something I have made, then I feel that I have succeeded.”
Artist Statement
I have been making innovative work for over 40 years. Addressing the issues of being a female in a male dominated field (woodworking), a minority, and being disabled (deaf with cerebral palsy) has made for an interesting adventure of navigating this challenging road to my career as I know it now. That, and challenging the norms of this chosen field of woodworking certainly has informed my practice of combined ideologies of feminism, ethnicity, traditional/domestic, craft objects (furniture) and historical and social narratives.
My newer work has moved beyond the boundaries of traditional studio craft and into the realm of social practice. Executive Order 9066 explored my Japanese American heritage though the forced evacuation of my maternal grandparents from their home in California, and addressed the shared emotional loss suffered by the Japanese American community in 1942. My latest work, The wildLIFE Project, focuses on the endangerment of wildlife, a cause that is very personal to me. I traveled to Kenya and met with wildlife advocates to investigate the dangers of the continued poaching of these magnificent animals. The trip served as a source of inspiration to create a new body of work and incorporate a strong societal message of advocacy for animals.
