COMMENTS ABOUT SACHIKO FURUI

Sachiko, All I can say is that I enjoy your work so much. It contains Balance and Symmetry. It definitely shows your talent and the field that you have trained.

(Arthur Ross)



Thank you once again for the masterpiece (hanging in a place of honor over the doorway to the sun porch!), which glows with life and color, among a few other cherished mementoes of Asian origin in this house.

(Barbara Carleton)



Sachiko, Itfs beautiful and it fits beautifully! I am delighted with it!

(Carlos Grana)



I think your work is exclusive with beautiful coloring. It fits almost any setting. As a matter of fact, it gives people homey atmosphere. I am very satisfied with your work that I bought and gave to my best friend as a Christmas present.

(Galina Bertelsen)



When I first saw this painting, I gasped. My reaction was immediate and visceral because I was on the mountain in the storm. Everything dark was there to make fearful, the fury and chaos in nature, the cliff, the abyss, imminent death and destruction, surging water and trembling rocks, a difficult, tumultuous scene. Yet also I notice, that quietly and surely, there shine small things which give me a hope, a hint of color, a ray of light, flecks of gold in the blackness.
Yes, I am on the mountainside and there is much road to walk, but I am given courage and support. In the midst of my worst depressions or in moments of bad news, I look at this painting. It feeds my soul, kicks out the creeping paralysis, and encourages my action, persistence, and faith. I transcend the urge to cringe and hide to walk on, hopeful and brave.
Later, Sachiko told me she had created this painting in few very intense days, just at the time of the Kobe Earthquake. She did not get the news until a few days later of the total devastation in the city that she lived and the death of her art teacher Waichi Tsudaka (1912-1995).

(Toni Treadway)



My father's family has roots in Newark, Delaware. The "George Read" house is
there. Sachiko's beautiful woodblock print connects me to my family history.


(Cathe Read)



1985, May 24th
The Mainichi Newspaper
Art critics
Satoru Yamamura

Sachiko Furui's solo exhibition at Amano Gallery is enjoyable enough for the presentation of her work made of colorfully painted cloth in the show window which was reconstructed from the original wide space of this gallery specially for this exhibition. The hanging painted art looks like a curtain or a Japanese Kimono sash. The paintings of its background are also painted freely by water acrylic. Sometimes they remind us of the flower drawings and therefore I dare to say her work is one of Japanese New Wave Paintings filled with a gentle feeling only that young female has. She lives in Osaka. The exhibition will be by June 1 st.





1995,November 1st
Salem Evening News

Japanese traditions at West End Gallery
Koto, the Japanese traditional string instrument, will be played to open the last show of the season at the West End Gallery. The show opens tomorrow from 7 to 9 pm and will end on November 19th.
The show futures Rowley artist Sachiko Furui who views America with a special eye. After coming to America in 1985, she began a series of woodcuts based upon the experience of Hiroshige Ando. Furui has started her 100 views of America depicting, so far, New England, Delaware and New York.





1990, November 13th
Plain Dealer
Helen Cullinan

Woodblock prints enhance the city

"We want a series of prints that will show the positive energy of Cleveland"
That was the only instruction given to the creators of "Six views of Cleveland" prints in the classic Japanese woodblock print technique, now on view at the Mitzie Verne Collection in John Carroll University.
The project was in the expert hands of painter Sachiko Furui and her own master print maker. Furui did the sketches that were transformed into print. Sachiko, living in Boston now, exhibited in the "Cross Cultural Currents in Contemporary Japanese Art" series at the Verne Collection last spring. "Eight Viws of New England" prints in that show inspired the gallery to commission a series that would celebrate Cleveland.
It's obvious where the real inspiration lies. Woodblock technique produced such Ukiyoe masterworks as Hokusai's "36 Views of Mt. Fuji," Yoshitoshi's"100 Aspects of the Moon" and Hiroshige's "53 Stations of the Tokaido Road" and "Eight Views of Lake Biwa." Hand in hand with woodblock technique went the emphasis on numbers, in the organizational mode of Asian thinking. "Six Views of Cleveland" is in that tradition.
"We started at daylight," Verne Collection vice president Michael Verne said of his whirlwind two day tour of Cleveland landmarks with Furui last May. Visiting about a dozen locations from Chagrin Falls to the Gold Coast, Furui sketched her chosen subjects on the spot, making color notes in Japanese.
Furui never had seen Cleveland and had no attachments. Verne's attitude was intentionally stand off, letting her pick what she wanted. He was constantly amazed when she stopped dead and zeroed in on a scene like a photographer knowing when to click the shutter.
Architectural monuments were not Furui's interest. Nevertheless, she was captivated by the Epworth-Euclid Methodist Church which she portrays with the flavor of a pagoda in Kyoto. She frames it in blossomed cherry branches from across the Lagoon, making the surroundings most important. It's one of four views in the series in a vertical format 11 by 8 inches.
Furui's sloping Little Italy scene obscures the Holy Rosary Church in power lines and parked cars; the one thing missing is people, but the hour was early. In her Flats scene, one of two prints in vertical 5.25 by 4.25 format, a black lift bridge dominates to the horizontal view, with letting to the right across the river on the side of a building clearly spelling out Fagan's.
A very blue brook bubbles through woods in the "Metroparks" print. "Palace Theater" does the renovators proud in its depiction of plush red velvet seats and loges under glittering chandeliers and curtained arches. Finally, "Tower City" shows and black Terminal Tower at night, flanked by the Power House smokestacks.
The prints are issued in edition of 100. Using up to 12 color blocks for each image. While representational in essence, they take liberties with a palette that depicts Cleveland as if seen on a halcyon day when the Cuyahoga River looks like the Caribbean. The series is both technically superb and upbeat in feeling.