Visual Arts

Sachi Yamabe

Sachi Yamabe is a visual artist. She was born in Burnaby, BC and grew up on Saltspring Island and Vancouver Island. She is Sansei. Yamabe received a BFA from the University of Victoria in 1987 and an MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design (NSCAD) in 1989. Yamabe’s work has been exhibited […]

Tamio Wakayama

Tamio Wakayama is a photographer.

Bart Uchida

Bart Shigeru Uchida is a Sansei sculptor and multimedia artist. Born in Vancouver, Canada, Uchida has studied and worked in Canada and Italy, and currently shares his time living between the United States and Argentina. His work has evolved from carving to include large scale installations, performance art and public and community artworks. He has […]

Akira Yoshikawa

Akira Yoshikawa has always been interested in art, architecture, design and music. After graduating from the Ontario College of Art in 1974 with Special Commendation from the Department of Experimental Art, he has exhibited at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Art Gallery of Peterborough, Tom Thomson Memorial Gallery, Mercer Union, Art Gallery of Algoma and […]

Walter Sunahara

Walter Sunahara was a painter. He was born in Vancouver and during WWII was interned as a child at Bay Farm, Slocan. Moving east after the war he earned a degree from the Ontario College of Art, Toronto in 1959. Walter then pursued graduate studies at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts specializing in Nihonga, […]

Yoshiko Sunahara

Yoshiko Sunahara is a sculptor, ceramicist, and mixed media artist. With many international exhibitions, and public commissions utilizing large-scale cast bronze and ceramic sculpture in her earlier portfolio, Yoshiko’s current work employs mixed media medallic sculpture in the form of ‘hand-held’ sculptures. Yoshiko’s work reflects a deep concern over environmental and social issues, voicing protest […]

Shizuye Takashima

Shizuye Takashima was one of Canada’s foremost Nisei painters. Beginning in the late 1950s, she became noticed on the Canadian art scene for her skilful and sensitive figurative paintings, but her style and subject matter underwent many transformations throughout her career. She is most well-known for her book, A Child in Prison Camp, which tells […]

Satoshi Saito

A sculptor, graduate of Keio University and member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Satoshi Saito has been working with Louise Doucet Saito, herself a sculptor, since 1963. In 1965, Satoshi and Louise travelled to Japan at the invitation of Tatsuzo Shimaoka. There they worked to produce two exhibitions of ceramics, in Utsunomiya and […]

Leslie Sasaki

Leslie Sasaki is a sansei art educator and artist living in Hamilton, Ontario. He was born in Winnipeg in 1953 to George Sasaki (b. Annacis Island, BC) and Rosa Adeline Sasaki (nee Takatsu, b. Hainey, BC) His formative artistic influences include his father, who was a sign painter and his mother, who encouraged her children […]

Kazuo Nakamura

Kazuo Nakamura was an internationally recognized abstract painter, widely noted for his application of rigorous mathematical structure to his depictions of both landscapes and more abstract visuals. Born in Vancouver in 1926, he was teaching himself how to paint landscapes when he was forcibly relocated as a teenager to the Tashme internment camp, where he […]

Louise Noguchi

Louise Noguchi is a multidisciplinary visual artist who challenges her audience with themes that pose psychological questions. Using photography, sculpture, video and other media, Noguchi’s concepts confront the spectator’s notions of identity, perception and reality. Her work has been exhibited at the Power Plant, Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the Contemporary Art Gallery, […]

Tsuneko Kokubo

Tsuneko Kokubo was born in Steveston BC in 1937, and raised in Japan. Returning to Canada in her late teens, she studied Fine Arts for four years at Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University), focussing on drawing and painting. She has worked extensively in theatre as a performer (physical theatre and dance) and […]

Mitsugi Kikuchi

Mitsugi Shinran Kikuchi is a painter who works in traditional Japanese styles of sumi-e (ink brush painting) and tarashikomi (‘drop-in’ method of watercolour painting), and a retired ikebana sensei in the Ohara school. He learned sumi-e and tarashikomi after graduating high school in Japan, and also became an ikebana teacher before immigrating to Canada in […]

Chiyoko Szlavnics

Chiyoko Szlavnics has been composing music that combines acoustic instruments and sinewaves since around the year 2004. This combination of sound sources produces music that shimmers with aspects of sound not usually audible in music that is concerned with fast-changing scenarios. Her slow music allows certain details of sound, including certain psychoacoustical phenomena to come […]

Janet Horne Cozens

Janet Horne Cozens began studying art at the age of two in Japan. Her love of art continued after her family immigrated to Northern Ontario thanks to her mother, a well known haiku poet, who encouraged her to be creative and explore various media. After graduating from the University of Toronto with a degree in […]