Mineo Mizuno: In the Huntington Art Gallery

Three striking new works by California-based artist Mineo Mizuno (b. 1944) activate the Huntington Art Gallery and its outdoor loggia to invite new ways of looking at the art collections and surrounding gardens.

Mizuno’s practice connects the ceramic traditions and aesthetic philosophies of his native Japan with the artistic and cultural legacies of California, his home for more than 50 years. In Nest, his piece installed on the loggia, manzanita branches from fallen trees, sourced in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, are combined with steel, aluminum, hemp, and ceramic forms to make delicate “nests.” Viewed in relationship to the adjacent gardens and the majestic San Gabriel Mountains in the distance, the work suggests an interconnectedness between humans and nature.

In the main hallway of the gallery, Komorebi - light of forest and Thousand Blossoms bring together the past and the present and also connect continents—in the same way that the historical objects in the gallery spotlight Huntington co-founder Arabella Huntington’s penchant for putting Chinese ceramics, British paintings, and French furniture in lively conversations with one another. Mizuno’s installation includes Japanese origami–inspired ceramic dogwood blossoms and an oak stump from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The two contemporary pieces interact whimsically with two 19th-century terracotta figures in the hallway—replicas of marble sculptures made in 1709 representing a tree nymph and Flora, the ancient Roman goddess of flowering plants—that were carved for the Tuileries Garden in Paris.