Image: Miya Ando, Yamameguri (Drizzling Evening Rain that Moves from Mountain to Mountain, 2024

ART EXHIBITION at MURASAKI HALL and STEAM GALLERY

Ai: Rain Drawings in Natural Indigo

EXHIBITION HOURS:
Wednesday, September 30 - Saturday, January 23, 2027
Monday - Friday 12:00pm-6:00pm, Saturday 10:00am-3:00pm
Closed on Sundays & Holidays (October 12, November 11, 26-28, December 25-January 2)

OPENING RECEPTION: RSVP HERE
7:00 - 8:30 PM, Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Opening Talk by Miya Ando

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Indigo (J: ai 藍) has been used in Japan for art and textiles since the sixth century CE. In Buddhist sutra manuscripts, sacred texts were written in shimmering gold and silver on deep indigo-dyed paper. Miya Ando draws upon this material history through her use of natural indigo and silver, bringing these traditional materials into a contemporary meditation on rain, language, and time.

During the COVID pandemic, Ando began exploring the myriad words used to describe rain in Japanese poetry and literature, a project that culminated in Water of the Sky: A Dictionary of 2,000 Japanese Rain Words, published by The MIT Press in 2025. Using natural indigo, graphite, and pure silver powder on handmade paper, Ando produced drawings that evoke each of these words. Fourteen large-scale drawings selected from the compendium of Water of the Sky are on view here, looking back on Japanese traditions to preserve a language of rain for the future. Also on view are 200 drawings from 498 Aspects of the Rainy Moon, a related series that extends Ando’s exploration of Japanese rain language through the conjunction of rain, moonlight, and season.

This exhibition was organized for The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles, by Michael VanHartingsveldt. All art generously loaned by Miya Ando. 

ARTIST

Miya ANDO

Miya Ando is a Japanese and American artist and author whose work gives form to ephemeral natural phenomena and explores time and impermanence. Solo exhibitions include the Noguchi Museum and Asia Society. She has exhibited at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the 56th Venice Biennale. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and other public institutions. A recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, Ando is the author of Water of the Sky: A Dictionary of 2000 Japanese Rain Words, published by MIT Press.

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