Excerpt from an article by Mary Lee Pappas for Arts Midwest
“Urushi is most close to who I am,” says Indianapolis-based artist Nhat Tran, who has been creating abstract sculptural and 2D pieces with lacquer over the past two decades.
Nhat Tran guesses there are fewer than 10 artists in the United States making works in Urushi, a 6,000-year-old traditional Japanese art form of using lacquer. Born in Vietnam and living in Indianapolis, Indiana, she is among that celebrated few. “It’s not well-known especially in the US. It’s really rare, so it’s an important mission for me to introduce it to people,” she says.
Urushi is named after the Asian tree species, where the sap for the lacquer is derived. For millennia in Japan, it’s been used on an array of utilitarian and decorative objects like furniture, food bowls, Buddhist sculptures, and more because it’s water-tight, lightweight, insulates, and is durable lasting hundreds of years. Tran explains of the dark, translucent material, “the Japanese (historically) will put it on wood to make it shiny, protect it, make it more beautiful.”
An artist her whole life, Tran’s curiosity with Urushi became her calling about 25 years ago when she received grants from the Indianapolis Arts Council to study in Japan with master artists. “I have tried many things. Urushi is most close to who I am,” she explains of her immersion into the art form.
