Visual Arts

Michiko Nakamura

Michiko Nakamura is a ceramic artist, born and raised in Japan. Her relationship to clay and art began in childhood; she grew up near a town famous for its history of over 1200 years of pottery production. Since elementary school, she liked to create three-dimensional objects so it was a natural choice for her to […]

Kenji Nagai

Kenji Nagai is a freelance photographer based in Vancouver. Born in Japan, he worked for photography studios in Osaka and Kobe before immigrating to Canada in the 1970s. He has had his own company, Kenji Photo Design, since 1983.

Troy Suzuki

Troy Suzuki is a filmmaker whose work includes documentary, drama, and experimental video, with humour as a key component in his work. He studied fine art at Concordia and Emily Carr, and his work has been screened in Vancouver, including at the Powell Street Festival, Victoria, San Francisco, Dawson City, Mexico City, New York, Belgium, […]

Mitsu Ikemura

Mitsu Ikemura is a Victoria-based mixed media artist. His richly-layered, semi-abstract ‘mindscapes’ integrate his background as an architect and urban designer with Asian-style brushwork, and he is also heavily influenced by Western-style classical music of the kind that he grew up hearing his mother play in Japan. He began his art practice with the intention […]

Takuro Kamata

Takuro Kamata (1939-) is an artist who worked primarily in traditional Japanese methods of textile design and woodblock prints. Originally from Miyagi prefecture in Japan, Kamata studied economics and got a job in the insurance business. At this time, he also pursued his interest in arts and crafts, and eventually studied woodcut printmaking under Toshi […]

Marjene Matsunaga Turnbull

Marjene Matsunaga Turnbull is a ceramicist and doll-maker. She produced functional pottery from 1987 – 2012. She also created Nikkei kokeshi (Japanese wooden dolls) – each one unique in facial expression and design. From 1981, Turnbull compiled family stories and in 1991 finished writing and editing the book Hisaoka Family Memoirs. Turnbull needed to know […]

Tomoko Kodama

Tomoko Kodama was a sumi-e painter born in Tokyo. She first discovered her love of art in high school, and went on to study nihonga painting in university. She received a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1957. Kodama immigrated to Canada with her husband, Hideomi Kodama, in 1962. They were planning on staying only […]

Hiroshi Yamamoto

Hiroshi Yamamoto is a nihonga and sumi-e painter. His artist name is ‘Hakuho.’ Yamamoto was born in Shiga prefecture in Japan. He graduated from the Kyoto Industrial Design Institute and the Kyoto Japanese Art School, where he studied Japanese Traditional Art – Nihonga, Sumi-e and Art History. He was awarded the Ruth Yamada Award in […]

Yosh Inouye

Yosh Inouye is a photographer and graphic designer. He studied sociology, photography, and graphic design in Japan and came to Canada in 1968. He worked as an advertising photographer, operating his own studio. In the mid-1980s, he was invited to teach at Sheridan College of which he says, ‘I didn’t know I can teach until […]

Yumie Kono

Yumie Kono is a visual artist who draws and paints. She was born in Hiroshima and grew up in Matsue, Japan. She graduated with a BFA from the Women’s College of Fine Arts in Tokyo in 1967. After traveling for a year from 1971-1972 to North America and Middle East, she immigrated to Canada and […]

Renay Egami

Renay Egami is a multimedia artist. Originally from Vancouver, she is currently based in Kelowna BC where she teaches at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in the Faculty of Creative & Critical Studies / Visual Arts. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and […]

Michael Tora Speier

Michael Tora Speier is a west coast North American visual artist, born in Berkeley CA, raised in Vancouver BC, of Jewish and Japanese ancestry. He received a visual art scholarship from the Helen Pitt Foundation and graduated with BFA honours in Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia. Growing to define himself as a […]

Heather Midori Yamada

Heather Midori Yamada is a Sansei visual artist and teacher who works with washi, Japanese handmade papers. She leads contemplative workshops which combine guided meditation, hatha yoga and creative brushwork. Recently married and having moved to Victoria, BC, Yamada continues to teach in Toronto at the Japanese Paper place and in Montreal at the Museum […]

Kevin DeForest

Kevin Ei-ichi DeForest is a visual and multimedia artist. He was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba to Japanese and Swiss parents. He studied architecture (Bachelor of Environmental Studies, 1983) and fine art (BFA, 1986) at the University of Manitoba before getting an MFA from Concordia University in 1994. He was also a Mombusho (Japan Ministry of […]

Naoko Matsubara

Naoko Matsubara is a printmaker. She received her BFA in 1960 from the Kyoto Academy of Fine Arts in Kyoto, and an MFA as Fulbright Scholar at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1962. In the same year, she was a ‘Special Invited Student’ to the Royal College of Art in London, England. Over […]