The artist Motoi Yamamoto’s sister died when she was twenty-four of a brain tumor. In the Japanese tradition of honoring her, Motoi Yamamoto devised an extraordinary artwork in her memory.

1. http://www.ggarts.com/
450 West 31st Street, Loft 2N
Gloria Garfinkel New York, NY 10001
Tel: 212.643.9545
Return to the Sea: Saltworks by Motoi Yamamoto
The artist Motoi Yamamoto’s sister died when she
was twenty-four of a brain tumor. In the Japanese
tradition of honoring her, Motoi Yamamoto devised
an extraordinary artwork in her memory.
Mark Sloan, Director of the Halsey Institute of
Contemporary Art in Charleston, South Carolina
invited Motoi Yamamoto to the ‘Spoleto Festival USA’
to do a memorial for his sister at the Museum. Using
400 pounds of ordinary Morton’s table salt and the
Halsey‘s dark floor, in fourteen days, using just a
simple squeeze bottle you might find on a counter at a
local diner, Motoi completed a very large, magnificent
and ethereal work of art. Its beauty could make you
wish it would last forever.

2. http://www.ggarts.com/
450 West 31st Street, Loft 2N
Gloria Garfinkel New York, NY 10001
Tel: 212.643.9545
Return to the Sea: Saltworks by Motoi Yamamoto
You can watch the artist at work on YouTube and marvel at how tiny crystals can
be transformed.
On the afternoon of July 7, hundreds of people, many of them children, went to
the Halsey Institute for the public dismantling ceremony of the salt
painting. Everyone happily and regretfully took some of the salt and returned it
to the sea while at the same time cherishing the memory of its beauty in the form
of a painting.
Return to the Sea: Saltworks by Motoi Yamamoto will travel nationally after its
inaugural presentation, including stops in Los Angeles, California, Charlotte,
North Carolina, and Monterey, California.
Photo Credit: Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art
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