Yoko Kubrick is a sculptor working between California and Tuscany. She works in marble, bronze, stainless steel, and other natural materials, creating forms that feel pulled from the world—like something shaped by water, wind, or time.

Her work is inspired by the curve of a petal, the undulations of moving water, and the ridges of a landscape. She calls this the emotive language of form: the way shape can carry feeling before you can explain it. She’s drawn to archetypal patterns we keep encountering across time and culture, and she returns again and again to studies of line, light, and proportion.

Her work has been exhibited at Filoli and is permanently installed at the University of San Francisco, and has been featured in publications including T: The New York Times Style Magazine and Kinfolk.

Artist statement

I’m interested in how certain shapes communicate before we have words for them—how an opening can feel like breath, how a curve can feel protective, how weight and balance can hold tension or calm.

My work often begins with two kinds of looking: attention to forms found in nature, and attention to the emotional temperature carried by archetypal stories. The psychological undertones of classical figures and myths frequently spark the initial shape. I treat those references as catalysts—a way to locate a feeling—so the sculpture can become a kind of abstract portrait: not likeness, but presence.

I’m drawn to curves and a sense of softness—an energy I think of as feminine—as a counterbalance to a built world dominated by lines, angles, and corners. I hope the work can rebalance a space, and feel equally at home in gardens, landscapes, and architectural sites.