A major figure in American art for more than fifty years, Isamu Noguchi was a master of simple, economical sculptural form and a visionary landscape architect. This work from the later part of his career takes its name from an island off the coast of Japan (literally, “magic island”), from which the granite of this rough-surfaced, low-lying sculpture is thought to have come. Throughout his career, Noguchi had been intrigued by the challenge of using light materials, such as balsa wood and aluminum, to make things that look heavy, and heavy materials, like marble and bronze, to make things that look light. Shodo Shima, with the abstract appearance of a giant bird’s nest, surely must recall this sculptural paradox: the massive granite forms piled at its center suggest the delicate fragility of birds' eggs.