Awakening features the haunting, surreal work of Ryo Toyonaga, a New York City-based contemporary artist, in his first major museum exhibition. Organized by Lawrence Fong, the JSMA’s former curator of American and Pacific Northwest art, the exhibition surveys twenty years of ceramic and mixed-media sculpture, drawing, and painting. Toyonaga’s imagery is drawn from a wellspring of recurrent dreams, and the result is a surprisingly original world that fuses craft, technology, and nature into mysterious hybrid forms and imagery. Scary illusions, or subtle awakening—Toyonaga’s art is an elegant blend of organic imagination and modern aesthetic. Support for Ryo Toyonaga: Awakening is provided by the Coeta and Donald Barker Special Exhibitions Endowment, The Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation, a grant from the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and JSMA members.