Artist Mayumi Amada’s Work Explores Themes Focused on Ancestry and Circle of Life

Born and raised in a small rural town in Japan, artist Mayumi Amada loved making things with her own hands and learned to use her grandmother’s sewing machine when she was only six years old. As a child, she liked drawing and painting, too. Her recent work is focused on mortality in eternity and eternity in mortality. 

On Tuesday, April 11, Amada will share her slide lecture, “Shadows Through Circles,” at Del Mar College (DMC) sponsored by the College’s Cultural Programs Series, the Art and Drama Department and Del Mar Art Partners. 

The free lecture begins at 11 a.m. in Room 324 of the Coles Classroom Building on the East Campus on Naples off Kosar at Staples. For more information, contact DMC professor of art Cynthia Perkins at 698-1503 or cperkins@delmar.edu.

Amada came to the United States in 1998 to study English and became an ESL student at the University of Minnesota. She started taking art classes and later became an undergraduate art major.

“My energy and passion for art exploded since it had been suppressed for a long time. It was like water breaking a dam,” says Amada. 

Exploring themes such as repeated generations, ancestry and a circle of life, Amada often uses a doily in various settings and materials such as a flower and water as important visual elements in her work. Through her artwork, Amada is trying to find the meaning of ephemeral life and hopes that viewers also have a moment to think about their own lives and motivate themselves to consider what they want to or need to do to lead a fulfilling life.

Amada earned a Masters of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from the University of Minnesota. Since then she has had a very active professional career including a solo exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska. Her work is now shown nationally and internationally. 

“I really loved art and wanted to study it, but I didn’t have a chance to do so until I came to the United States,” says Amada. “It has been a long way to reach here, but I feel I finally came back to the right track. Now I’m living with spiritual satisfaction and gratitude as a professional artist.”