May her work continue to delight and inspire.

I share here what little I have to share of her work, but also something of how her obsessions leak into my work: infinity, iteration, quantum-level abstraction.

I’ve treasured my photo of Yayoi Kusama’s “Venus,” “Statue of Venus Obliterated by Infinity Nets.” This work of hers once filled a wall at the Memorial Art Gallery (MAG) of the University of Rochester. Red-dot covered life-size, but minimalist statue of Venus against a field of red dots. An iterated past, fixed, a goddess trapped in need of liberation Venus. My answer, transformed to the point of vanishing.

I don’t believe I ever printed my rendering of “Venus” or Kusama’s other work shared here, which is from the New York Botanical Garden, 2021. They are the lushly painted flowers and water reflections in and around the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory’s water gardens. Her work was elsewhere too, including an infinity room—we entered, we stood, we photographed. Mais bien sûr !

Also in the collection are a few of my Kusama-inspired photos in the hope they expand the Yayoi Kusama Universe, be it ever so slightly.

— August 2026 —