Moon Window
Etsuko Ichikawa
June 26 - October 10, 2026
GOCA Project Space
Ent Center for the Arts
This Is Where Moon Window Was Born
My work has long explored light, fluidity, memory, and the threshold between the visible and invisible. Fire, water, and light have become my language for giving form to the unseen.
For this residency, I brought sumi ink and washi paper from Japan—materials I had long wanted to work with, but without any expectation of where they would take me.
Water carries ink in such beautiful ways, as if it has a life and intention of its own. In that sense, this process profoundly echoes my Glass Pyrograph works, in which I draw with molten glass and fire. I begin the gesture, then allow the material to move as it wishes. Each work becomes an experiment, each gesture a conversation between my hand and the substance itself—whether fire or water.
My father passed away in 2024. As I traced his ancestry through the kakochō (過去帳), a record of my family's Buddhist memorial names, I began to notice a remarkable pattern. Across nearly four hundred years, the character for moon appeared again and again. Twice I found the name Moon Window (月窓). Alongside it were words that have accompanied me throughout my life and work - light, blue, mist, mountain, sea, and cloud. It felt less like coincidence than recognition.
For years I have also been researching the mirror, particularly the Shinto sacred mirror, Yata no Kagami (八咫鏡). I have come to think of it not as an object, but as a medium—one that reflects rather than generates light. The moon, too, has no light of its own. It becomes visible through reflection. Like mist, like memory, it exists somewhere between presence and absence.
On many late nights in the studio, I found myself in tears while drawing. It felt as though something long held within me had finally found its form—something that could become visible and be shared.
My works in the Project Space are traces of that beginning. They include experiments, failures, and discoveries. Together they mark the birth of a new body of work that I have come to call Moon Window.
Thank you.
Etsuko Ichikawa
June 2026
IMPORTANT DATES
Exhibition on View
June 26 - October 10, 2026
Opening Reception:
Fri, June 26, 2026, 5-8 pm
GOCA Project Space
Artist Talk with Etsuko Ichikawa
Fri, June 26, 2026, 6-7pm
Chapman Recital Hall
Gallery hours:
Thursday - Saturday, 1 - 6 p.m., or by appointment
email: gallery@uccs.edu | call: 719-255-3504
About Etsuko Ichikawa
Etsuko Ichikawa is a Tokyo-born artist with an international practice spanning installation, sculpture, drawing, film, and performance. She received her BFA from Tokyo Zokei University in 1987, attended Pilchuck Glass School in 1993, and soon after relocated to the United States. After eight years as a studio assistant to Dale Chihuly, she established her independent practice in 2003.
Describing her work as “visual poetry,” Ichikawa explores memory, perception, and the fragile relationship between human experience and the natural world. She is recognized for her Glass Pyrograph series, in which she uses molten glass and fire as a drawing medium, merging gesture, material transformation, and temporality.
Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Seattle Art Museum; and the Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, and is held in the permanent collections of the Toledo Museum of Art; the Eretz Israel Museum, 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 and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Recent projects expand her practice into immersive installations, incorporating light, glass, and moving image to reflect on ecological urgency, spiritual perception, and the lasting impact of human intervention in the environment.
Photos and Videos for the Galleries of Contemporary Art at UCCS, 2026