Recent Projects

I’m now represented by LoCA arts in Seattle. They are an online gallery.

My work can be found here: https://loca.art/collections/michiko-tanaka

Project done for Tukwila Parks and Recreation and Urban Artworks. Located at Crystal Springs Park in Tukwila by the tennis courts. It features two greats of the tennis world: Serena Williams and Roger Federer.

I spent a year making this mural for the Vang-Johnson household. I got to work with here two daughters, Lily age 6 and Ella age 3. Her two nieces visiting from Minnesota also helped. The unicorns were for her three girls (Ruby, age 1 wasn’t able to help.) The quetzalcoatl represented their son. Other magical creatures came from cultures around the world.

Using just packaging, twine and yarn I made this installation for The Edmonds Arts Commission. The temporary installation will last three months.

I’ve been working for the last year with The Fremont Troll Knoll and Mach 2 Arts to create an installation in the park next to the Fremont troll. Urban Earth Nursery helped me with moss application information. The turtle was inspired on a trip to Osaka. I was walking in the Dotonburi, the Japanese Las Vegas, when I stumbled across a moss Buddha. I thought to exchange the Buddha for a turtle and make it into an environmental installation. People are invited to sprinkle water on the moss turtle and make a wish.

https://www.fremonttrollsknoll.org/updates/welcome-turtle

On December 29, 2020, we welcomed a new art installation to the east side Troll’s Knoll – the moss turtle. This sculpture installation was made possible by a grant from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods. The moss turtle installation was designed by artist Michiko Tanaka (Yellow Laboratories) and fabricated by Mach 2 Arts. The installation is still in progress as we are working to fully cover the turtle in moss. The moss turtle is a symbol of the environment – once the turtle is fully propagated with moss, we will be adding a water basin so visitors can show their appreciation of the environment by caring for the moss and sprinkling it with water.

Stop by and say hello!

For my latest installation, I was interviewed by the International Examiner

Hadley House residents voted on 4 out of 8 potential murals to be painted in the stairwell of their condo. These are the four that were painted. The murals are details from paintings done in the style that was concurrent with Brutalist architecture (a style in which the building was designed.)

A note about the show:

Selected from over 1200 submissions, this exhibition presents the work of twenty-four artists working in a range of mediums and practices. While the selection was not guided by a pre-determined thematic, there does emerge common ground and threads of connection across the diverse works. In particular, there is a strong sense of revealing the unseen—whether a people, a system, a history, or a practice. Translated through transformative layers of materiality, abstraction, or revised modes of representation, the works address concerns from ethnic genocide, the threat of current politics, injustices across gender and sexual preference, the fundamental inequity of social structures, and efforts to reimagine the white-washing of history—among other issues. Other threads tie together across works foregrounding a tactile materiality, those embracing abstraction embedded with social issues or the body as a site of contest, and certainly, resonating in many diverse objects, a ghostly sense of absence and loss linked undoubtedly to our current state of isolation and lack of community connection.

Invited to participate in The Collective Visions Gallery in Bremerton show. This is the youtube link advertising the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqwaefQZX3Q&feature=youtu.be

I submitted 6 paintings of crows