About

Artist Statement

I am a maker of fine art textiles. I established Junco Sato Pollack Art Textiles in 1980. I have professionally engaged in fine art textiles for over thirty years. My art is permanently installed as an accent to architectural elements in corporate offices, public spaces, and on walls in private residences. I have exhibited over time in museums and galleries in over 30 cities in 13 countries in the world.

My spiritual practices go back over twenty years. I have since 2002 closely woven these two aspects of my life into seamless everyday life/studio activities. Such practices as sutra chanting, meditation, gardening, and internalized yoga and qigong were integrated with the repetitive processes of textile making, further cultivating deep knowing connecting mental and physical, – ie. Eastern stillness and Western kinetic energy. This resulted in the recent series of artworks that express various states of conscious awareness which were exhibited at the San Jose Museum of Quilts in a Solo Exhibition entitled, Meditation in Space and Time: Junco Sato Pollack 2002-2012. I combined handwork with such modern technology as digital imaging, heat-compression, and heat-transfer printing (known as dye-sublimation), using an industrial machine to create art textile works exploring the Buddha’s mind. (ie, kesa, monks’ robes, sutra hangings, mandalas, etc.) I approach creation as contemporary art reflecting the state of the art and spirit of the time, accepting chance composition and markings, leading to the subtle refinements and pure abstract expression.

Such Eastern philosophical traditions as Buddhism, Zen, Tantric Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Jainism, Vedanta, and Western religions including Christianity, as well as the American New England spiritual tradition of Emerson and others, all honor, one way or another, the practice of meditative, silent contemplation as a way of experiencing “knowing intuitively.” Meditators also practice the creative outlet by artistically painting or stitching “mandala”, “tantra”, or “yantra” representing and embodying meditative, complex spiritual practices with the intention to clarify the awareness. It is considered a teaching tool to use images depicting the state of ideal, complete, inner Self and outer Universe.

Concentration on or creating essential visual image of focus stimulates mental and spiritual experiences. In Zen practice, for instance, art begins in calligraphy, and painting is an extension of brush-marks. Engaging in immersed action, leading to the purification of awareness has also the therapeutic effect, as documented by Carl Jung in the West.

As a textile artist, I have taken a reductionist approach to the meditation, applied on fabrics, -in this case making abstract marks of folds and stitching, one stitch at a time. The potential benefit was to be entirely in the open-heart and chance aspect of intuitive marking. I kept my mind free and open from a commitment to the final outcome and accepted the works as they developed in the presence of the moment. This being said, however, I am pleased to see the resulting works all speak of focused soul energy and transcendence of consciousness through time.