1904-1988 (United States) With a Japanese poet for a father and Scottish-American writer for a mother, it is not surprisingly that Isamu Noguchi inherited a strong creative streak. He was a prominent Japanese American artist and architect whose career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Unwilling to be labelled, Noguchi created sculptures that could be as abstract as Henri Moore’s or as realistic as Da Vinci’s. He used any medium he could get his hands on: stone, metal, wood, clay, bone, paper – carving, casting, cutting, pounding, or dynamiting away as each form took shape. “Appreciate the moment.”