Artist: Mitsumasa Overstreet

Birthplace: Okinawa, Japan,

Date of Birth: September 12, 1971

Education: BFA, California College of the Arts, San Francisco – 2000

Mitsumasa Overstreet is a contemporary visual artist and designer primarily known for his public art installations.

Today’s “built” environments often lack connection with the quality of life for the people who live in them. The role of my art is to create those connections in communities through research, vision, design and collaboration.

Public art is the perfect opportunity to inspire, heal, educate, cultivate and beautify environments in meaningful ways. It can positively connect people to the places they are experiencing: wandering in a park, waiting at the airport, walking outside of their places of work, homes and cultral centers or even looking out the windows of their cars as they travel.

These moments in time are opportunities to give importance and quality to the ebb and flow of lives. In my perspective, the public works that I’ve designed and installed are places that reach for this connection, while at the same time, striving to create and frame the positive memories of a community–who they are and who they can be.