Makino bends glass tubes with fire and hand-carves wood (specifically heartwood of the pine tree in the works on view), to create her neon light sculptures. The lines of colored light produced by neon and phosphor imitate silhouettes and contours the artist observes in the landscape. She joins the two materials with carefully knotted thread—a method inspired by garden bracing systems used to guide and manipulate tree growth. Emitting a diffuse glow, these works are grounded in Isamu Noguchi’s concept of akari—a term denoting light as illumination, and, as Noguchi suggested, weightlessness.