Hi, my name is Inke Alba Noël. I am a San Francisco based graphic designer and now artist and have been obsessed with clouds for as long as I can remember. I’ve always loved watching white puffy clouds move across the sky and discovering the stories inside them.

That love has followed me everywhere. I designed my first business cards with clouds, carved cloud shapes into orange-painted cardboard in my tiny Castro Street apartment, and then kept going when I moved in with my husband in the Haight.

From the windows of our Page Street apartment we had a breathtaking, cloud-level view over San Francisco, so I carved massive clouds from repurposed foam core I found at SCRAP (https://www.scrap-sf.org/) and they floated with us for nearly twenty years.

When we moved to the Bayview in 2021, we missed them. But I no longer wanted to use unsustainable materials (though I did recycle the foam core). My daughter suggested to make them out of wood, and so I did.

Why Yuki? The name came to me in a dream. When I woke up I looked it up and learned that it means happiness, snow, or snowflake, and it is also the name of a Northern Californian Native American tribe. It felt perfect since Yuki = Happiness. A truly perfect name since they have always been happy-dream-clouds in my mind.

Think of soft, playful clouds you want to jump into and float away with. An escape? Why not. A moment of presence and gratitude? Absolutely. Even one breath and an internal smile is enough.

The native American Indian connection to the name brings full circle the sustainability aspect of this fun project. Overall, I think it's my way of connecting with nature, the sky, the immenseness of this life and creating art that can live in our spaces, yet also return back into the ground.

I invite you to dream in a goofy, bubbly, playful way and get carried away if only for a brief moment.

Enjoy!
Inke :)

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