About

Masako Miki was born in Japan but has made the Bay Area, and Berkeley in particular, her home for more than twenty years. In her work she remains close to her ancestral traditions, especially those that arise from her association with Buddhist and Shinto beliefs and practices, as well as traditional Japanese folklore. Her current work, she says, is “inspired by the idea of animism from the Shinto belief of yaoyorozu no kami [eight million gods] who are both good and evil with a wide range of personalities.” In defining this world of shifting boundaries, Miki creates larger-than-life-size, …