May 18 to June 9, 2024
Akemi Alchemy: Healing Visions
Catch Akemi Alchemy's Healing Visions, an electric and surreal dive into more spiritual ways of experiencing this world.
No one needs to teach an acorn how to grow into an oak tree. And no one can convince the acorn to grow into a Magnolia or an elephant instead. How many times have we ignored our authentic natures, our innate wisdoms, and forced our own acorn of a life to grow too fast, without water or in the wrong direction – wounding the seed in the process? Visionary painter, musician and OneHouse Arts guest teacher Akemi Alchemy has spent many years re-learning how to compost what she sheds and tend to her acorn nature. Her debut solo exhibition Healing Visions illustrates the journey of her authentic self-discovery and spiritual alchemy process.
Akemi’s canvas envelops the eyesight and massages the mind in brilliant colors and mesmerizing patterns. Primordial patterns – motifs of roots, air currents, stars and skies – form the tapestry holding details of deeply personal stories of suffering and growth: discovering her voice anew, her ancestors’ lives from rural Japan to WWII concentration camps, and bearing witness to the destruction in Gaza. Technical descriptions cannot accurately convey the experience of standing face-to-face with these images. Such energies may only be approximated in poetry: the blinding warmth of the sun as hope emerges from rubble, a reminder that even as our homes are being destroyed, we must continue to plant gardens.
From May 18 to June 9, 2024, catch Healing Visions at OneHouse Arts Studio Gallery, located in 306 N Garfield Ave #A3, Monterey Park, CA 91754. The gallery is free to visit – please text Rachel at (626) 236-7683 to make an appointment. Akemi will also host an all-ages artist demonstration in the gallery on Sunday, May 26 from 9:30 to 11:30 AM. There will be a celebratory closing party on Saturday, June 8 from 5 to 8 PM.
Born in 1990 in Orange County, CA, Akemi Alchemy discovered an early love for drawing and singing but stopped creating freely as she became indoctrinated into “the real world,” preparing herself to work “a real job” that didn’t involve art. After studying Sociology at UCLA and ten years of getting laid off from a series of political nonprofits, she started drawing and singing again. Each painful layoff she faced gradually pointed her towards deeper discovery of her authentic self, opening her life to expanded states of consciousness, deep friendships and radical new ways of living – all of which helped her unlock long-buried creativity.
Following this, Akemi started a spiritual soul band with her friends called Mystic Tiger. In 2022, she started taking painting classes with Amanda Sage & Vitra Academy and began exhibiting and selling her work at fairs and concerts. In 2023, she was selected to attend two week-long visionary painting intensives, one of which at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in upstate New York. And in 2024, she launched her online art shop and participated in her first group show, Keepers of Memory: Women of the Diaspora and Displacement in Los Angeles.
When she’s not painting, Akemi can be found facilitating meditation groups in her living room, teaching creative expression to kids, and singing as a professional caroler during the holidays. More about Akemi’s offerings, including a full collection of her artwork, can be found at akemialchemy.com.