Mariko Kusumoto, who now lives in Lexington, MA, is the daughter of a Buddhist priest and grew up in a 400-year-old temple in Japan. The beauty of the landscape and the textures of the aging temple always intrigued the aging artist. She remembers being drawn to “faded paint and wood, stone steps with hollows created by centuries of raindrops dripping off the roof” and the intricacy of the metal and the wooden ornaments that she was tasked with the job of cleaning and polishing.