Brush the Sky

  • Type: event
  • Location: Wing Luke Museum (Smithsonian Institution Affiliate Museum), 719 South King Street, Seattle, Washington, 98104, US
  • Starts: May 15 2015 at 12:00AM
  • outbound link ↱
An augmented reality calligraphic family narrative, written onto the Seattle skies.

Gallery installation + site specific AR public art
Tamiko Thiel: Augmented reality & digital prints
Midori Kono Thiel: Japanese Calligraphy

For millennia East Asian artists have enhanced paintings with calligraphy, the abstract,
graphic qualities of the brush strokes reverberating with the meanings of text and image.

In “Brush the Sky,” a mother-daughter duo brings this ancient art into the 21st century:

In the Wing Luke Museum gallery, transparent wall hangings by Midori Kono Thiel emphasize the abstract nature of calligraphic art by deconstructing Japanese characters across multiple layers. Her daughter Tamiko Thiel enhances both the gallery installation, and 18 sites of family history around Seattle, with geolocative augmented reality overlays.

These virtual artworks further de- and re-construct Midori's boldly abstract, gestural calligraphy into visual poems, marking sites of this Japanese American family's four generations of involvement with Seattle.