Roots & Burls
In 1975, Junko asked some workmen to give her a dead root they had just dug up from a construction site near her home.
The root, although dead, seemed to Junko to be very much alive, to radiate energy, and to be a universe all unto itself. She set the root on her studio table and sketched it for a year; and then, over the following five years, she created a series of collages of the root - collages made up of tiny cutout pieces of magazine images, layered on top of each other like oil brush strokes.
Even after that series was finished Junko continued to see dead roots and burls as living things - things which inspire intense empathy. These things have become themes in her works ever since.
"Torn in some sense from my roots, having lost the power of my native language, I became like the torn roots. A potent, powerful symbol the root also appeared as a microcosm of the universe, a complex network of energy, both chaotic and ordered, made manifest in sculptural form."