NATURE’S CANVAS. Naomi Shigeta’s "Riverway," in color and composition, suggests definite divisions where gentle nature and urban engineering meet. (Photo courtesy of Augen Gallery DeSoto)

From The Asian Reporter, V18, #24 (June 17, 2008), page 17 & 20.

By Ronault L.S. Catalani

Many writers — many from here, from this confluence of grand river systems, from this moody place of constant rain raised by our nearby sea forever fed by those same swollen rivers — try to put into prose, try to put into poetry, the lovely rhythm of the thing. Portland’s thing, nature’s thing.

It’s hard to do. Words often won’t get us there.

Many painters try too. A quiet artist’s vocabulary can, at once, reach both a loftier perspective and suggest those intimate perceptions each of us experience as if our very own: fat rain drops on a glossy sidewalk; a turgid stream flowing, a stubborn rock midstream. An artist can go there. An articulate one.

Naomi Shigeta does. This Japan-born, Oregon-inspired painter can do all that, take you birds-eye high a little like those Google aerial maps we play with when we should be working, or like those Monday morning satellite weather shots every Portlander must take in before dashing out. And Ms. Shigeta can take you close. So close that only abstraction tells the truth. What’s essential.

So maybe this is the best way of viewing Ms. Shigeta’s exhibit, hanging at Augen’s northwest Park Blocks gallery through June 24 — from up high on down to close focus. Best also to go on a rainy day, to set the mood of our geographical and meteorological region. A context for Ms. Shigeta’s vernacular.

Naomi Shigeta’s "Riverway," her "River basin," and her three-panel "Lakeside," in color and composition suggest definite divisions where gentle nature and urban engineering meet. But also evident from her sky-cam perspective is the interplay, indeed the interdependency of all our earthly elements. Says the artist about her river, lake, and ocean blues, some soft and some bold, "They are connecting city to city, to sea, connecting continents.

"From the air you can see the patterns. Connections sometimes can only be seen from far off."

A kind of midpoint, a place between Naomi Shigeta’s "far off" views and her tight close-ups, is her waterfall series. Some conscientious Augen curator hung her eight-panel series on the northwest walls, they take a corner then resume, they take in mediated Park Block sunlight, also moving. Very cool.

A better name, a sounder concept, for the waterfall series might be "waterfalling." Ms. Shigeta’s flow is the play’s central character. Take a tall tumbler of cold water; remove glass. Or more to the point of her Augen exhibit: take the river and remove her conduit. Better yet: Isolate Bridal Veil Falls from her basalt. What’ve you got?

It’s liberating. Hard to put in writing, as suggested at our article’s start. It’s about interaction between hard and soft. About interdependency. Intimacy. Best if experienced.

And it leads, naturally, into what may be grouped into Naomi Shigeta’s third category of current work, her up-close stuff. I really mean close-up. "I had to get ver-ry close," says Ms. Shigeta. "Close like this —" showing the distance between her paper and her peepers when she pens or pencils those lively little whirls animating her water cascades, her tree barks, all those flowing life forms streaming across her art.

Unhappily, Augen Gallery has hung only two of Ms. Shigeta’s drawn trees. The rest, the best are in back. But of them all she says, "I try to capture natural energy in our lives. Our lives depend on nature, on trees," she continues, her eyes following the flow of trees, their fluttering leaves, their ivy stretching for our sky. There’s obvious joy in these trees, in their execution on paper and their expression before our eyes.

"I get so excited doing their shapes," she smiles. "It is my pleasure to make art work."

And it does work. Naomi Shigeta has done what every artist implicitly promises us — to show in her own vernacular, with her blend of old-school Asian aesthetic and bold Western abstraction, a world words can’t express. In an emotional instant. In this complex place. Under all that rain.

Naomi Shigeta’s work is on display through June 24 at Augen Gallery DeSoto, located at 716 N.W. Davis Street in Portland. Gallery hours are 10:30am to 5:30pm Tuesday through Saturday. To learn more, call (503) 546-5056 or visit <www.augengallery.com>.