Ami Kobayashi is a Tokyo-born sculptor and sound artist currently pursuing her BFA in Sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design. Starting her artistic journey in oil painting, she has since expanded her practice to include diverse mediums such as metal, wood, bookmaking, and sound. Her recent explorations involve speaker mechanisms, using sound as a medium to connect sentimental experience with physical presence.

Ami’s sculptural work empathetically responds to communal fears of vulnerability and the alienating effects of modern urban life. Her practice also deeply explores personal experiences of isolation, particularly shaped by her navigation of life in the U.S. from a Confucian background. Central to her work is a candid exploration of grief and the longing for home, stemming from her own experiences of displacement and loss. She materializes the quiet, often unspoken moments of the search for comfort, using subtlety and absence as critical tools.

Reflective of her childhood memories and the complexities of being adrift in both foreign and familiar spaces, Ami’s work preserves and tends to overlooked emotions like childhood loss and grief. She creates spaces and objects that offer solace—both communal and personal—by giving form to these delicate, often buried feelings. Inspired by the curiosity of children, her ongoing interest in picture book-making serves as a way to process and preserve her childhood experiences.

Ami has experience working with children through volunteering at a daycare in Redwood City CA, and teaching art classes in Nerima, Japan. Her dedication to art education stems from a belief in its cognitive and emotional benefits for young children. She currently works part-time as a mold maker for David Hasslinger, a glass artist based in Providence. Her work has been exhibited at Yoshii Gallery in Tokyo, the RISD Museum’s Gelman Gallery, the RISD President’s House, and Brown University’s Carriage House.