“I’m ultimately attracted to stories about women-creatures who’ve been shunned and are seen as symbols of fear in folklore and I am attempting to show them in a more compassionate light.”

Interview by Charlie Hawksfield

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Where did you study?

I grew up in Morgantown, WV then went to school at the Rhode Island School of Design and graduated with a painting degree in 2013. After graduating, I spent some time in New Orleans, and my studio practice was very spotty and touch-and-go while I was living there. Going to art school (though I’m grateful for the education I received) made me feel jaded about my studio practice and it took me a while to get my own grip on the work I wanted to make, instead of feeling influenced by institutions, academia, and contemporary trends. When I moved to Pittsburgh, I decided to immerse myself in art-making again and started embracing doing more figurative and personal work. There’s a very active and supportive arts community here, and the revival of figurative painting that’s been happening over the past few years helped me feel invigorated again. When I was in school, Zombie Formalism was big and informed a lot of the critique, and I felt very disconnected from the trend. Once figurative work started making a comeback a few years ago, I felt a lot more inspired by the work that was being shown.

I’ve really enjoyed looking into some of the influences you cited from Japanese mythology and pop culture. I’d heard of the film "House" by Nobuhiko Obayashi, which a friend recommended to me as “the craziest film you’ll ever see!” Are you interested in bring these films, artworks and mythologies to a wider audience through your work, or are you more attached to them personally as inspiration to your practice?

I’m glad you’ve been into them! I love telling people about “House” whenever I can and can’t recommend it enough. It’s been such an inspiration to me with its experimental and surreal visuals and its story about love, grief, loss, trauma, and the horrors that they can create, and it’s all packaged up in a zany and colorful film. It’s such a wild and fun ride of a movie, you should definitely check it out, especially since Halloween is right around the corner. I watch “House” almost every year. You can watch it for free here on archive.org!

Sharing Japanese mythology and artwork is definitely an aim of mine. I really love sharing stories and figures from Japanese mythology on my Instagram, as well as woodblock prints depicting myths that artists like Toriyama Sekien and Utagawa Kuniyoshi made. Every so often I post about a person or character from Japanese mythology or history on my Instagram page to show what my influences are. I tend to post about history and folklore as I learn or re-learn about them, and I like to think that my followers are learning along with me when I share about them. 

I can see “The story of the Jorogumo” has given you a character that crops up a few times in your works. Just from Googling I learned that: “Jorogumo are said to come to be when a spider, most often a species of orb-weaver, comes to be 400 years old. On its 400th birthday, the spider gains strange powers and becomes the size of a cow. It can then change its shape to a beautiful woman.” You mentioned that you are interested in femininity, but why has this myth attracted you especially?

I’m ultimately attracted to stories about women-creatures who’ve been shunned and are seen as symbols of fear in folklore and I am attempting to show them in a more compassionate light. Over the years, I’ve come to inherit the jorogumo as a guardian for myself as a queer Japanese person, watching over me within the margins I live in with my identity and heritage, and in my work, I depict her spectating over Japanese people engaging in acts of intimacy. A lot of stories of the Jorogumo center on her being deceptive and predatory to men, and my choosing her as a subject is kind of a way for me to relinquish her from these patriarchal, cautionary tales. I also just love spiders and find them to be incredible and beautiful creatures and not something to fear. 

You’ve said the latest work is influenced by j-pop idol culture and the public persona. Is there a specific way that j-pop has channeled fame or “life in the public eye” that might differ from other genres or cultures?

I grew up interacting with J-Pop and idol culture whenever my parents and I would visit family in Japan, and connecting with Japanese pop culture helped me feel closer to my heritage. Growing up in Morgantown, WV as a Japanese person was isolating, and I didn’t know many Japanese people my age, so engaging with Japanese contemporary culture was very important to me. I was always very curious about what these pop idols symbolized as performers and public figures. There’s so much innocence and purity that’s promoted in these performers, and they personified very gendered ideals that I internalized a lot. I guess that’s kind of a global thing when it comes to pop stars, but in Japan, there’s an angelic image that these pop stars portray to me. There definitely was not a lot of Asian representation in American pop culture when I was younger, so engaging with J-Pop and Japanese pop culture helped me feel a lot less invisible as a Japanese person living in West Virginia. 

Your works have compositional similarities to graphic novels, and you mention the use of panels which helps create the sense of myth, fantasy and unease mixed together. I also like the sense of narrative as character reappear across works. Are you looking to create a story within these works and with these characters, or is each piece its own stand alone artwork that happens to share elements with the others?

I think my answer is a little bit of both? I’ve had the idea to create a narrative or do some writing to go along with my work, maybe in the form of poetry or haiku, for a while now. Currently, there are threads that connect my work as a body–relationships, friendship, love, femininity, and intimacy–and I think I’ll use those concepts to create writing to go along with my work. Reading and writing poetry used to be an integral part of my studio practice, and I’m excited to return to writing and seeing how it helps tie my work together.

Tell us a bit about how you spend your day/studio routine? What is your studio like?

I largely work from home at a drafting table in my living room, and I recently moved into a printmaking studio and am very excited to pursue screen-printing and linocut printmaking and integrate it into my process. I’m kind of a night owl when it comes to making my work, so lately my primary work time has been anytime between 7:00pm-4:00am. I do a lot of image archiving and am constantly revisiting Japanese Avant Garde theatre posters and woodblock prints to keep my creative juices flowing. Lately, I’ve been having a lot of fun taking screencaps of K-Pop music videos and using them as image references. I’ve also started keeping a sketchbook again and have been doing loose pen and marker drawings that I intend on making into larger pieces or prints.

Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?

I just joined the Board for Misfeed Press and I’m super excited! I’m just now getting into printmaking, risograph, and small press and I’m really looking forward to immersing myself in those worlds.

Website

Instagram

All images are courtesy of the artist
Date of publication: 03/11/22