As a thirteen-year-old returning to America for the first time, Noguchi passed through Seattle on his way to a school in Indiana. Almost fifty years later, Noguchi was commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts to create a public sculpture in Seattle. On this occasion, Noguchi set himself to a new challenge—carving in hard stone on a large scale—which would result in finding his long-term assistant, Masatoshi Izumi, and his studio in Mure, Japan. The massive black void in Brazilian granite is positioned as a standing aperture in Volunteer Park, near the Seattle Art Museum (now the Seattle Asian Art Museum).