Jeannine Shinoda

2016 Kamiyama Artist in Residence participant

Jeannine Shinoda is an architect and an artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. Using both sculpture and performance, she examines the everyday systems of contemporary life.  At the basis of her inquiry, is a desire to explore a personal place of ambivalence and pleasure. In this fertile territory of investigation, she oscillates between the sometimes divergent impulses of immersion and analysis in order to create her work.  
Shinoda is the recipient of the Stewardson Keefe LeBrun Travel Award from the Center for Architecture, for which she traveled to East Africa to research on unplanned developments. She received her Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University, her license in architecture from the state of Oregon, and her Master of Fine Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  (text in 2016)
Aritist's Website

—————
Life in Balance

Life in Balance is composed of two site specific installations created out of objects gathered from the townspeople of Kamiyama. One was built at Shimobun Atelier and the other at the tea factory. Constructed concurrently and inspired in conjunction with one another – the two are separated by a 4 km journey along Route 438 and a town road. 

At Shimobun Atelier, the installation is both sculptural and performative. Delicate ceramic dishes from a past life are suspended at eye level by threads hanging from a black cedar grid above. Scissors hang on the four columns that support the grid and define the boundaries of the sculptural space. One can meander through the constellation of dishes or stand in the small spaces along the perimeter. Hung in counter-balance, when the scissors are used by participants, the dishes fall two by two to the ground. Sounds become music: A “gasp!” and small laugh, a dull thud or the tinkle of shattering as the objects fall on painted cedar flooring. A thin layer of shards and thread begins to build up on the floor. What is left?

At the tea factory, bright pops of colors float in a large white room putting viewers in a dreamlike trance. In this space within a space, thin filament connects object to white rod. White rod is connected to white frame which is suspended between two beams. Invisible forces, currents of air created by an open door or the heat from the wood stove lit to keep warm on a chilly autumn day, stir the mobiles into motion like shipwreck debris on an ocean surface. On each rod, two unlike items hold each other in balance: a small seashell and a sudachi, a red sponge and a green plastic grater, an aquamarine ashtray and a slice of pink agate. Multiple rods must come together to form a mobile and each becomes a distilled representation of the randomness present in everyday life. A fan flutters in a breeze and the entire sculpture is swept by a wave of motion – off kilter and spinning. The room calms and the objects again begin reaching towards equilibrium.

Title: Life in Balance – Kamiyama : Shimobun Atelier
Type: Installation and Performance 
Size: 3.5 m x 3.5 m x 2.5 m
Materials: Donated Ceramic, Cedar, Sumi Ink, Nylon String and Scissors

Title: Life in Balance – Kamiyama : Tea Factory
Type: Installation
Size: 3 m x 3 m x 2.2 m
Materials: Donated Household Objects, Cedar, Wooden Rods, White Paint and Fishing Line