Illumination necklace: 22" Length, Polyester fabric, sterling silver, signed on pinback. Mariko Kusumoto is best known for intricately sculptedfabric sculptures, jewelry, and other wearables. Resembling marine life and other biomorphic forms, her works play with the materiality of translucent fabric. Kusumoto was introduced to metal as a sculptural medium when she was a graduate student at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco; she subsequently worked with the material for numerous years before incorporating fabric into her practice. Her first solo museum show, at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts in 2010, presented fantastic metal-box sculptures that echo the assemblages of Joseph Cornell. In 2014, Kusumoto began working with light polyester fabric to explore the potential of a softer material. Her work is informed by her childhood spent in a four-century-old Buddhist temple. Kusumoto is inspired by ancient man-made structures and the microscopic world alike, and many of her sculptures appear to have been taken from the deep sea. Her works are in the permanent collections of museums like the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Swiss National Museum, and the Racine Art Museum.