From an industrial park in Silicon Valley, Yoko Kubrick is summoning gods and monsters. When the door of her large, nondescript unit is rolled up, a world of beauty reveals itself: The sculptor makes monumental bronze and marble works—nine-foot-tall sculptures full of quiet surprises and subtle, erotic references to plant life and the ocean.

Born to a Japanese mother and Czechoslovakian father in the US territory of Guam, Kubrick grew up moving between Guam, Hawaii and San Francisco, spending summers with her grandparents in what is now Czechia. Sitting in a workspace overflowing with carving tools, small plaster studies and stacks of art and philosophy books, she credits her early inspiration to Hawaii: “There’s Indigenous sculpture everywhere, and the way the teachers in school ...