Columbia Fiero, Akiko Kotani and Soon-im Kim, work in the medium of fibers, using materials such as thread, cloth, and cotton. They demonstrating how common materials can be innovative ly used to integrate both Asian and Western sensibilities. In doing so they touch on a lightness and informality that is physical yet intangible, daring to harness the intangible lightness of air. Each artist in her own way touch on a vital presumption about matter?塜 physicality and its seemingly ephemeral properties that promise to have an impact on the assumptions of a democratic society.

Columbia Fiero grew up in Canarsie, Brooklyn in the 1960s and received her B.F.A. from the Parsons School of Design. She has been an artist-in-residence in Vietnam under the aegis of the Indo-China Arts Partnership, at the Hanoi University of Fine Arts and has traveled extensively throughout South-East Asia where she has studied Asian Art.

Columbia Fiero works with delicate, almost ephemeral, mediums such as rice paper, paper towels, tissues and ink to create sculptural paintings, or sculptures of air. The layers of materials hold their form while conveying novel if not poetic information with familiar substances. References to garments, pages, stains and detritus pose her modest claims to the pathos of subways, tenement apartments and, in general, urban living. The intangible aspect of her work, the themes and ideas she has been wrestling with combine goals that are more indigenous to religion than the art marketplace. This is where the personal inner realm exalts in a scent of the sacred.

Akiko Kotani was born and raised in Hawaii andreceived her MFA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA and has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center and the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Newbliss, Ireland. She has traveled extensively and has lived in Guatamala where she studied under a Mayan Indian weaver and learned about the integration of woven fabric into the culture of the family. Kotani?塜 fascination with fabrics, and her study of Mbuti scratching on beaten bark fibers has greatly informed her use of abstraction in her work. By combining her understanding of indigenous art with her interest in Japanese art, Kotani has created a new type of calligraphy through the medium of stitching and fabric.

Akiko Kotani retired in 2000 from the faculty of Slippery Rock University, where she is now Professor Emeritus of Art, and since then has had 28 one-person exhibitions and shown her work in over 170 group shows. She has won numerous awards from jurors such as, Duane Michals, New York photographer, Jill Snyer, Executive Director of Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, and New York curator Robert Storr. Akiko Kotani currently resides in Sariyer, Istanbul, Turkey. (She will attend the opening.)

Soon-im Kim was born in Punggi, South Korea in 1975 and received her M.F.A in Sculpture from Ewha Woman?塜 University in South Korea in 2007. She has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center and, in 2006, was the Vermont Studio Center Freeman Fellowship Foundation Winner. Soon-im Kim has shown her work in numerous exhibitions and places such as Japan, China, Poland, Norway and the United States.

Soon-im Kim works primarily with the medium of cotton or wool fiber, fabric and thread, sculpting strikingly life-like portraits and figures of the elderly that exude life and embody human essence. She transforms realism, its language and metaphors, and transports it into the dimension of a weightless world. Q-tips are made of the same substance, but it takes a spirit forged in a crucible of flowing metal to attempt to do what she does. Kim?塜 startling innovation participates in the tradition of Hsieh Ho?塜 first principle of art, that is to have ?鲆ife Force?? This notion informs rice dough figurines, puppets, paper figures, as well as calligraphy, brush painting, etc. Her work is haunting, beautiful, delicate, yet remarkably bold. Asian American Arts Centre, Inc. is supported, in part with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, and The National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. With additional funding and support from Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, 9.11 Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Manhattan Mini Storage/Edison Properties Inc, Materials for the Arts, Pearl River Mart, United Orient Bank, New York Cosmopolitan Lions Club, Con Edison, the University of Hong Kong, Dedalus Foundation, The Nonprofit Finance Fund, WTC Business Recovery Fund, Expedi Printing, Inc., Jody and John Arnhold, Danny C.K. Li, Jeanne Lee Jackson, Linda Peng, Wing Lee Yee, John Yu, and the many generous friends of the Asian American Arts Centre. All contributions are greatly appreciated and tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.