She’s the star of SF’s buzziest art opening. See inside her sculpture-packed studio

At the far end of an industrial cul-de-sac in West Berkeley, where overgrown lots meet busy warehouses and breweries, the sculptor and painter Masako Miki makes the stuff of dreams come to life. 

In her light-filled studio, Miki erects shapeshifting spirits, mythical creatures, and large-scale watercolors inspired by Shinto animism — an ancient Japanese belief that all things possess a spirit. On Friday, 45 of these creations will go on display at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, in “Masako Miki: Midnight March,” the artist’s largest-ever solo show.

After decades of work, the 51-year-old is achieving international acclaim, thanks in part to her new powerhouse gallerist, Jessica Silverman. Miki’s watercolors and sculptures have appeared on the campuses of tech giants, in well-endowed Bay Area collections, and on the walls and floors of museums and galleries around the world. 

Standing in her studio feels a bit like being in a Hayao Miyazaki film. Shinto sprites float across the room, a cavalcade of spirits marching in so-called “night parades.” Inspired by artists like Ruth Asawa and Isamu Noguchi, Miki playfully subverts Japanese visual traditions through riotous color and contemporary forms. The legs of her sculptures, for example, echo the contours of midcentury furniture, a nod to her father, who sold antiques. Her vibrant interpretations of yōkai — a catchall term for the supernatural beings from Japanese folklore — champion those on the fringe of society and blur the boundaries between myth and reality.

Miki took The Standard inside her studio for a look at the process of making her shapeshifting sculptures and the vibrant watercolors that form their backdrop.

Miki came of age in the 1980s in Osaka, just as the cultural austerity that defined postwar Japan was beginning to erode, expedited by the influx of Western music and art. As a teenager, she gravitated toward the angsty anthems of Pet Shop Boys and Culture Club — a sharp contrast to the rigid disciplines in which she had been trained, including classical calligraphy, which she excelled at, and the abacus, which she did not. 

When she arrived in the Bay Area at 18 to attend Notre Dame de Namur University — a small Catholic school in the suburbs of Belmont — the contrast between Japan’s conservative approach to self-expression and Northern California’s embrace of radical creative freedom was intense. Alone and stuck behind a thick language barrier, she was driven into a state of deep sorrow. 

“When you can’t communicate, people think of you less — that you’re uneducated, incapable,” she said.

Miki turned to a longtime hobby that permeated cultural boundaries: painting. Through the medium, she defeated loneliness and learned a new kind of dialogue, one built on color, texture, and form, rather than words. As she refined her abilities, she found a friend in a painting professor 40 years her elder, Terry St. John.

A respected figure in Bay Area figurative painting who learned from Richard Diebenkorn, St. John took Miki under his wing. They spent weekends scouting spots across the Bay to paint, working in plein air until the sun went down.  

“He had this big pickup truck where he would literally bring his whole studio, with giant easels and canvases,” she said. “He was such a special artist. I learned so much about painting through him.”

Miki refined her craft over several decades, but it wasn’t until her 2019 solo show at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive that she took a bold leap. Operating on a tight budget, she decided to pour her life savings into scaling her figurines to life-size sculptures.

“I had watched so many other successful artists just go for it,” Miki said. “If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, right? But you just have to let everybody know that you are there.”

What could have been an expensive misfire turned into a career-defining win. Miki’s figures, once small enough to hold, stood eye to eye with viewers. The shift wasn’t just in size but in presence — the work had arrived, and it wasn’t whispering anymore.

“I have always been a fan of Masako going bigger and bigger and bigger,” said Martin Strickland, director of St. Joseph’s Art Foundation, who also curated the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts triennial in 2023, which featured Miki’s work. 

“It’s the art I want to think about when I close my eyes and dream,” Strickland said. “It’s her figures and her imagination and how she runs through the world, and she’s like that as a person as well.”

It was under the tutelage of Terry St. John, a lesser-known but respected figure in the timeline of Bay Area figurative painting, who himself learned from Richard Diebenkorn. Miki and St. John, would spend weekends scouting spots across the Bay Area, where they would paint until the sun went down.  

“He had this big pickup truck where he would literally bring his whole studio with giant easels and canvases,” she said. “He was such a special artist. I learned so much about painting through him.”

“Midnight March” features 45 spotlit sculptures, placing the viewer inside the night parades depicted in Miki’s paintings. 

“We wanted to bring in as many characters as we could to put you inside the void where you could be one of them marching in the darkness,” said Ali Gass, director of ICA SF, who curated the show.

Staged in the cavernous atrium of ICA’s new Montgomery Street location, the exhibition shows an enigmatic, slightly dark side to Miki’s work, proving that she’s still evolving.

“To morph, to shift, to change — it’s how we survive,” Miki said.

“Masak Miki: Midnight March” is at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco through Dec. 7.