Etsuko Ichikawa is a Tokyo-born artist with an international practice. She received her BFA from Tokyo Zokei University in 1987, attended Pilchuck Glass School in Washington, and relocated to the United States in 1993. After eight years as a studio assistant to Dale Chihuly, she established her independent practice in 2003.
Describing her work as “visual poetry,” Ichikawa works across installation, sculpture, drawing, film, performance, and socially engaged practice, reflecting on human dignity and the irreplaceable earth we inhabit. She is widely recognized for her Glass Pyrograph, using molten glass and fire as a drawing medium to create works on paper that merge gesture, memory, and material transformation.
Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Seattle Art Museum; and the Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo, and is included in the permanent collections of the Toledo Museum of Art; the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv; the Oriental Museum at Durham University; and the Museum of Glass, Tacoma. She has received support from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award. Her exhibition NACHI was supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
