Taiji Terasaki is a Japanese-American artist based in Honolulu, Hawaii whose work bridges art, science and social practice. He studied in the MFA programs at both Hunter College in New York and Cal State Long Beach, and holds a BFA from UC Irvine. He currently resides in Honolulu with his wife and two children. Terasaki became fascinated with Japanese art as a child. Growing up in Los Angeles, he remembers watching his grandfather, a first generation Japanese American trained in Japanese art, surrounded by the folding screens and hanging scrolls that he specialized in restoring. The artworks, all crafted with organic materials and vulnerable to the ravages of time and exposure to the elements, were given new life by his grandfather's painstaking treatments. His uncle had moved to New York to become an artist, and he remembers feeling innately drawn toJapan’s art and traditional cultures, an inclination enhanced by the fortuitous decision his parents to name him with the Japanese name, Taiji. For centuries, Japanese artists turned to nature to obtain their color palette, painting with iwa-enogu, pigments created by pulverizing minerals such as azurite, malachite, and cinnabar,binding them with an organic adherent. Unlike oil paints, iwa-enogu colors cannot be mixed to create new colors because each mineral fragments into particles of varying sizes and weights,precluding smooth blends. Instead, minerals are granulated into a range of specific particle sizes that each yield their own distinct hues.