Seattle-based artist, scholar, educator, and designer, Naomi Kasumi, was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. Kasumi is currently both Professor of Design, and Director of the Design Program. She started Her career as an assistant professor in 2003 she established the Digital Design Program in the Department of Fine Arts at Seattle University. The program is now named the Design Program and is situated in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design. Kasumi became a full Professor in 2019. Her background is highly varied. She was educated in music beginning at age five; as a young adult she was a professional cross-country ski racer; and in the U.S. she certified as a PADI SCUBA dive master. Her involvement in outdoor sports has given her a deep connection to nature. Kasumi’s love of art and craft and profound appreciation for the natural world are visible in her artistic perspective and revealed in her large-scale installation art. Kasumi’s main work, focused on a memorial series, employs a ritualistic process of repetitive creative actions in which she makes handmade objects spontaneously and obsessively. The vast quantity of these small objects emphasizes the scale, concept, and tangible quality of the work. It also represents a therapeutic and redemptive process that reflects a personal struggle. Kasumi’s work includes a variety of media—some ephemeral, some permanent. Recurring themes include “presence and absence,” “memory/memorial,” and “loss and healing” that derived from her personal experience of loss and grief, a primary focus of her installation art and research. Kasumi’s main work, focused on a memorial series, employs a ritualistic process of repetitive creative actions in which she makes handmade objects spontaneously and obsessively. The vast quantity of these small objects emphasizes the scale, concept, and tangible quality of the work. It also represents a therapeutic and redemptive process that reflects a personal struggle. Her smaller scale projects include book art, video, and design overall. Since Japan’s Tsunami disaster and her own near-death experience in 2011, she has been interested in working on a socially engaged art projects involving local community members, villages, schools, etc, collaboratively working with community on a common goal and celebrate the process of making art. She is globally active installation artist, and her solo and group exhibitions are broad in scope. They include galleries and educational institutions nationally and internationally. In Seattle, her exhibits and creative workshops have been enjoyed at the Wing Luke Asian Museum, the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) downtown, the SAM Asian Museum’s Gardner Center for Asian Arts & Ideas. Seattle Center, the University of Washington, and Seattle University have also exhibited her work, with some pieces conserved in Seattle University’s Special Collections at Lemieux Library.