Michiko Itatani is a painter and installation artist whose art process is uniquely shaped largely by her original passion: writing. She kicked of the “Artist Now!” guest lecture series on Sept. 17 at 7 p.m.

Itatani, who did not arrive on the American art scene until 1970, spent her childhood and young adulthood in Japan, studying literature and philosophy in the hope of becoming a fiction writer. The catalyst for her transition from fiction to visual art was a self-described ‘catastrophic’ review of her short stories. Itatani confessed that she was devastated when her senior writer told her that she ought to “go somewhere else and do something else… for a while.”

Although she never considered herself a natural when it came to art, and never had given serious thought to making visual art, it was “something else.” She chose Chicago as the “somewhere else” in which to do it. Itatani studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, earning both a BFA and an MFA. In 1979, she accepted a position there as a professor of Painting and Drawing.

Since, Itatani has exhibited her work locally, nationally and internationally. In 1992, she exhibited some of her work here at UWM in a series called “Macro/Micro.”

While she has found success, Itatani reminded the audience that fame and success should be low on the priority list. “Art is not about intoxication,” she said.

For her, she continued, art is about commitment and constructing a personal meaning to make sense of her world. Her process consists of pulling content from her daily life, focusing and researching those ideas, imagining and (notably) writing fiction about them, diagramming and drawing images, and finally, ‘fusion.’ This is when the actual painting begins, in which she takes joy in its spontaneous nature. It is not uncommon for Itatani to write and work on six large canvases at the same time. In order to craft a conclusive ending for a short story, she is occasionally forced to give up work on its companion painting.

Despite the fact that the Itatani’s subject matter and medium have shifted during 30 years of work, her constructed meaning, the story that she tells, has not changed. She continues to center around “human existence in the larger context of the universe.” Her latest exhibition, called “Cosmic Theater II,” is subdivided into two series, “Hyper Baroque” and “Moonlight/Mooring.”

“Hyper Baroque” is a series of symbolic spaces, inspired the extreme aestheticism of Baroque Architecture (think Oriental Theater) that the artist encountered in her travels abroad, especially in Prague. Most often, the setting is a library, seen as a place where mysterious things happen (actually her first exhibition was in a library). She depicts them as ornate interior spaces with electric blue archways. Instead of people, the spaces are occupied by haloed phantasmal orbs.

“Moonlight/Mooring” also depicts a symbolic space, though here, Itatani uses the forest. Comparatively monochromatic, this series’ lone punch of color comes from the presence of the glowing orbs. Occasionally, an astronaut makes an appearance in the series, looking comically out of place, like some irresponsible celebrity mislaid their Moon Man statuette. Itatani leaves the decision of whether the astronaut is coming or leaving up to the viewer.

The exhibition is exploration the human experience from different points of view. One series is about looking or reaching out and the other is about looking in. The artist admits that she is preoccupied with human desire to reach out into mental and physical space beyond ourselves. Art critic Donald Kuspit said that Michiko Itatani was capable of idiosyncratically combining deviating elements in her work. Itatani commented on an instance in which her work displayed a tendency towards mixing and opposition. “Well, it made perfect sense to me,” she said.

Anyone attempting to comment on Itatani’s work must consider the fact that at heart, she is still a writer. Each artwork is really a part of a larger collection that tells truths about human impulses and experiences. Anything that initially seems out of place does so because the viewer is not yet well-versed enough in Itatani’s symbolic vocabulary. Her work reads much like a collection of short stories. The art viewer will better understand and appreciate any one work after “reading” the entire volume.