Kiyomi Fukui Nannery

Kiyomi Fukui Nannery

Kiyomi Fukui Nannery is a multidisciplinary artist based in Long Beach. Her practice investigates the intersection of memory, materiality, and ecological loss. Through printmaking, drawing, and natural pigment works, she excavates emotional resonances embedded within organic materials and landscapes.

Central to her practice is the methodical extraction and application of mineral and botanical pigments—a process she views as both material exploration and metaphysical inquiry. These carefully sourced colorants carry what she terms “ghosts”: the accumulated histories, memories, and emotional traces held within natural materials. Her current work emphasizes this archaeological approach to art-making, where each pigment serves as both medium and messenger from specific lands and times.

In her recent series “Ghosts of the Marsh” (2024), large-scale mixed-media works on paper memorialize extinct species of California wetlands. Through layered applications of cultivated and foraged pigments combined with woodcut printing and collage techniques, these works serve as both elegy and archive—documenting vanished ecological communities while exploring themes of loss and remembrance.

While her earlier practice centered on participatory and socially engaged works, her post-2020 output has evolved toward more introspective, image-based investigations. This shift maintains her longstanding interest in emotional connections and human experience but approaches these themes through a more contemplative lens. The slow, deliberate processes of foraging, cultivation, and printmaking become meditative acts that allow for deep engagement with materials and their histories.

Her work eschews pure aesthetic concerns in favor of exploring how artistic process can forge connections across time—between present and past, between human and natural worlds, and between individual and collective memory. Through this material-driven practice, she creates works that serve as bridges between personal experience and broader narratives of loss, belonging, and ecological change.

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Contact Information

Kiyomi Fukui Nannery
fukui.kiyomi@gmail.com

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Artist Work

Ghosts of the Marsh (2024)
Ghosts of the Marsh depicts two extinct California wetland species: the Los Angeles Sunflower (last seen 1937) and Cunningham Marsh Cinquefoil (last recorded 1947). Based on herbarium specimens, written descriptions, and related species, these plants are reimagined in their lost habitat—the once-abundant coastal marshes now largely destroyed by human activity.

Yearning (2023)
Using foraged and cultivated pigments, this mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock print) evokes California's vanished wetlands—a landscape that has lost over 90% of its historical extent. The traditional printing process, unchanged since the Edo period, connects to my heritage while demanding patience and attunement to natural elements like humidity.

Salmon Byōbu (2023)
Created in collaboration with Michael Nannery, this byōbu (space divider) honors the sockeye salmon's life cycle between Pacific Ocean and freshwater spawning grounds. These fish, ranging from northern California to Alaska, nourish entire ecosystems through their life and death—their sacrifice sustaining forests and their inhabitants.