April Sunami
Columbus, OH
april@aprilsunami.com
www.aprilsunami.com
Education
2002 BA The Ohio State University
2008 MA Ohio University
Solo Exhibitions
2015 OSU Barnett Center for the Arts
2014 Something Blue, NX Gallery
2013 Anasyrma, Painted Lady Feminist Museum
Group Exhibitions
2015 National African American Museum & Cultural Center
2015 Ohio State University Urban Arts Space
2015 Vanderelli Room (Columbus, OH)
2014 Sight Studios
2014 Carnegie Gallery
2014 Tacocat Cooperative Gallery (Columbus, OH)
2014 Fort Hayes Shot Tower (Columbus, OH)
Selected Collections
Community Development for All People (Columbus, OH)
Clay Hiles, Esq. (New York, NY)
Bettye Stull Collection (Columbus, OH)
Donn Vickers
Kojo Kamau
Stephen Cannetto
Artist Statement
For nearly a decade I have painted women with fanciful hair and/or body coverings (i.e. burka, hijab, veil, etc.). When I first started painting this theme I was interested in exploring the beauty of the female face and combining it with flowing shapes to represent hair or the covered form of a body. I brought this same theme to the 360 project utilizing a woman’s face and presenting the background in an abstracted manner. When I first started painting this theme I was interested in exploring the beauty of the female face and combining it with flowing shapes to represent hair or the covered form of a body. I’m still engaged in the idea of coupling the abstract with the figurative, but now I’m also preoccupied with the larger theme of contrasts. Representational/abstract, light/dark, high/low, decorative/substantive, symmetry/asymmetry, material/idea, intuition/intellect, power/impotence, Western hegemony/marginalization, universal/specific and process/result are few of the dichotomies to which I attempt to bring into balance.
My piece titled “Un-whole Vision” is about the having an idea and it not coming to fruition as you planned. It is about embracing the unexpected and turning mistakes into “happy accidents.” As soon as I received my egg I quickly whisked it off to my studio expecting it to stay safe and whole. One day as I was showing it off to a friend I placed it on a table and to my shock it rolled off and broke. I decided to paint it in its broken state and haven’t looked back. In some ways the egg has become a personal metaphor for the detours that one must make in life.