SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

ART IN AMERICA
The sensation of swimming in trash, or junk, seems quintessentially modern – a consequence of insatiable appetites for new products and the attendant proliferation of packaging and advertising. The genres of collage and found-object installation, also prototypically modern, are intimately connected to trash as well. more >

CHICAGO TRIBUNE
The overview of Barbara Hashimoto's sculpture, installation and performance, at the Dubhe Carreno Gallery, gives an experience of a sort you don't expect from a young commercial space.The artist already has had a 15-year retrospective at a gallery in Los Angeles, so one assumes she has overseen the selections from the 17 years shown here. In any case, enough is on view for viewers to discern the development of -- and relationships between -- her ceramic sculpture, installation and performance pieces. more >

NEW CITY
From the street, you may think it’s hay. Grass. Something organic, harvested from right from the gallery floor. It streams out of the walls, tapering down into tail formation, filament-covered knolls flowing across the Chicago Arts District. The illusion, however, is short lived, and quickly the landscape shows itself for what it really is: paper. Tons upon tons of shredded paper, culled from. more >

SCULPTURE MAGAZINE
Every year Americans receive about 77 billion pieces of junk mail -- that's 100 million tress; approximately 44 percent goes unopened and proceeds directly to the landfill. Disgusted by such statistics, Hashimoto spent a year collecting and hand-shredding the juinkmail that came to her studio (3,000 cubic feet worth) more>

FLAVOR PILL
That she accumulated 3,000 cubic feet of paper speaks volumes about the so-called "direct mail" industry, and her organic-feeling installation is both formally lovely and ecologically alarming. more >

STATICMULTIMEDIA
Hashimoto gracefully scoops up mounds of multicolored shredded junk mail while musician Edward Torrez vigorously plays lingering piano riffs. Hashimoto transforms Torrez into the unsuspecting dupe, who plays all tuxedo clad, a sort of domestic elegance, while the stream of junk mail envelops him completely. The harder he plays, the further he is swallowed by the superfluous pieces of paper. more >

SCULPTURE MAGAZINE
Whether showcasing clay tablets on gallery walls or presenting sculpture in the round, Barbara Hashimoto's works explore the structures and strategies of power. Surveying a wide array of contexts, she has studied Japanese manga images, Hindu moral storybooks, and, more recently, the European tales of Shakespeare and Zola. more>

LOS ANGELES TIMES
As in her last, quietly moving show here, Hashimoto's sati work unfolds as a highly aestheticized meditation on the gender dynamics implicit in the custom, which draws its name from the Sanskrit word for faithfu or virtuous wife. Through fragments of text scattered among the small, page-like panels of paper or clay, Hashimoto challenges the notion that women practiced sati willingly, in one case citing a historical account of women being forced into the flames with bamboo rods. more >

ARTSCENE
Hashimoto’s acute observations of the skills and customs of people she encountered along the way became embedded in sculpture and performance art that is surveyed (as the first part) along with new work (as the second part) in a two-part exhibition of fifteen years of artistic practice. more >

 
COAGULA ART JOURNAL
Barbara Hashimoto’s recent exhibition at Ruth Bachofner Gallery explores time and process. Eschewing the finely-honed conceptual basis of her last solo exhibitions in Los Angeles and Chicago, she incorporates sculpture, photography, installation and performance within a single exhibition as a brave invitation to visit the artist’s mind. During this visit we encounter memories, fixed as a tranquil snap shot of a single moment, or laced within the obsessive activity of a new thought. more >

CERAMIC ART & PERCEPTION
Barbara Hashimoto's innovative approach to ceramics has earned her critical praise both internationally and locally. She fires books in clay. Applying slip to books or individual pages, Hashimoto's works are subjected to single or multiple firings in the kiln where the materials react to one another in unexpected ways. more>

DESHI CATALOGUE
"I feel the word 'reflection' expresses the relationship of a teacher and an apprentice. They teach one another. A teacher reflects an apprentice and an apprentice reflects a teacher." more>

XIEM GALLERY
Functioning as both requiem and prelude, How Comes It to be Furnished? marks a shift in the artist’s orientation. Carefully elucidating the passage of past themes, it lays the foundation for a deeper appreciation of the most recent work. Conceived to be as spare and elegant as her impeccably nuanced compositions, Part One distills the artist’s passionate engagement with theme and process over the past 15 years into a succinctly potent retrospective. more >

KOHLER ART CENTER
Based on her work, it could be said that Barbara Hashimoto likes loose ends. Such a statement seems in direct opposition with one of her chosen subject matters—moral stories. Moral stories are generally tidy, with a clear resolution and defined parameters indicating right from wrong. These narratives—like the popular Greek AESOP’s Fables—are used to teach and entertain. more >

ZIMMER MUSEUM CATALOGUE
Never had I imagined such patient, sustained labor. I could see, hear, feel, touch. As I watched Kurt gouge and plane and scrape and scoop and flex, I saw with clarity that the creative process was not about reaching for romantic images, but hard applied effort. more>

 

SCULPTURE MAGAZINE
Best Known for ceramic pieces in which she fires clay with books and then reworks the results with drawing, painting, and collage, Hashimoto employs sculpture, installation, and performance. Her process destroys and yet enhances the original purpose of the book, addressing concerns of censorship, neo-narrative, and the objectification of knowledge. more >

CERAMICS MONTHLY
“How Comes it to be Furnished?,” the first of a two-part solo exhibition of works by Los Angeles artist Barbara Hashimoto, was on display through October 15 at Xiem Gallery in Pasadena, California. The retrospective exhibition focused on the development and influences of Hashimoto’s ceramic-based bookwork, and included pieces never before exhibited in the U.S. more