When the IE was last in touch with LED light artist Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn in 2020, he had recently installed the light display Gather at the Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM). Since then, he has made a new home locally and finished a new installation project in the Rainier Valley area.
After 25 years in New York, Tsutakawa-Chinn felt it was time to return home. “My wife and I led a life with a small group of friends in New York City, and coming back, we had to get used to a large family and all the responsibilities that go with it,” he said. “As we all get older, it’s important to take care of those close to you.”
Meanwhile, Gather continued to have a home at SAAM through 2023, and was described as the shape of a canopy with a cross pattern found in both ikat and sashiko (stitch) textiles. “The textile patterns are classic and cultural,” said Tsutakawa-Chinn. “The choice to use this specific pattern is based on a variety of priorities and opportunities across aesthetics, technical possibility, and manufacturability.”
When designing Gather, Tsutakawa-Chinn sought out new LED technologies developed for mass production. He explaned that LEDs are only manufactured by very complex factories, nearly all of them are in China. His team is constantly reporting on new LED products, which they have seen as they work with their Chinese vendors.
Newly-available products translated directly into Tsutakawa-Chinn’s design.
Once designed, Tsutakawa-Chinn said that there were no major challenges during Gather’s installation. “Installation is like a performance or a play,” he analogized. “Once we get to that point, all kinks should be worked out, all contingencies planned for. In this situation, nearly everything worked as planned.”
This past summer, the San Juan Islands Museum of Art exhibited Tsutakawa: Generations — A Flow of Water, Form, and Light, to include the work of Tsutakawa-Chinn’s father and grandfather alongside his own for the first time. “I was asked by my family to participate,” he said of the exhibit that included work by both George and Gerald Tsutakawa. “Some people have shown me some similarities or common threads between the three generations.”
Tsutakawa-Chinn’s pieces in this group exhibit include “Coronal Ejection,” “SLS Printed Nylon,” “Composition Gold Leaf,” and “Electronics Package,” all from 2017. “These are a group of pieces I produced in conjunction with a show in Brooklyn, New York,” he said. “I spent a lot of time in New York City developing my own eye, and I think I would like more familial influence in my work.”
Here in Seattle, at the State Street building at 1700 21st Avenue South, Tsutakawa-Chinn has just finished an artistic light installation, considered to be one of the property’s key community amenities alongside a memory walk intended to honor the history of the Atlantic neighborhood. “It is a small walkway on the north side, visible from Massachusetts Street,” he said. “It is, in a sense, my own take on the Met Breuer Building designed by Marcel Breuer and completed in 1966.”
This seems a fitting homage to short-lived The Metropolitan Museum of Art space, since MOMA closed the space in 2020. But Tsutakawa-Chinn’s creation may remain in conversation with that originating idea, based on the Met Breuer lobby, as The Frick Collection now plans to renovate and reopen the space.
Looking ahead, Tsutakawa-Chinn continues his work with his firm Studio 1Thousand, whose work features projects on both coasts, and many U.S. cities in between.
