Yoskay Yamamoto blends his Japanese heritage with urban pop art

I have a bit of a soft spot for ceramic sculptors here at FINDING CAIN, having featured many artists in that genre before: Jason Briggs, Brett Kern, Orly Montag, Toshiya Masuda, and James DeRosso, to name a few. A few days ago, I discovered yet another artist working with ceramics named Yoskay Yamamoto. Born and raised in Japan, Yoskay is now based in California. He also draws, paints, creates street art and makes toys, but his sculptures, carved figurines, and installations are the ones which caught my eye. I did some digging, and found out a little bit more about this amazing talent.

On his bio, it reads: "A self-trained illustrator, Yamamoto's artistic tastes expanded as he fell in love with the urban culture of the West coast. Yamamoto discovered a way to fuse the two different cultural backgrounds together into his work. Yamamoto nostalgically blends pop iconic characters from his new Western home with traditional and mythical Japanese elements, balancing his Asian heritage with urban pop art."

Yoskay's work is usually made of either ceramic, cast resin, hand carved bass wood, or a combination of those materials. He keeps a blog and has a beautiful Instagram. Go check them out!

Comments

Enigmatic Shapes and Psychedelic Patterns

To say that I love Sanagi 's work is an understatement. Looking at her art feels sort of therapeutic, and I find her drawings refreshingly intricate. They're trippy, psychedelic, and resemble something that you might see under a microscope. Not much is Googleable about Sanagi, but that's fine. There aren't many artists these days that still pull off the whole mysterious vibe, so I commend her for that. By the way... they're all hand-drawn with pen and ink.

Here's a trippy reimagining of the zodiac animals.

These are the animals from the zodiac calendar as created by Japanese artist feebee . I can't even begin to imagine how long painting these hybrid creatures on wood panel must take, but the results are pretty amazing. Some of them look terrifying, some aren't scary at all, and one looks like the Pokemon Meowth. They're all eye-catching, but none of them mean as much to me as the one representing my own sign, the Sheep (also known as the Goat or Ram). The twelve animal signs represent twelve different types of personalities. It is said that people born in the Year of the Sheep can be very indecisive and lazy. Hmmm, I guess Chinese zodiac is pretty much legit.

James DeRosso's ceramic monsters

I really like these whimsical ceramic creatures by James DeRosso. Yes, they have bulging eyes and toothy grins, but they're not scary at all. The Portland-based artist started making cute monsters while he was a student to jokingly create gargoyle-like guardians for the kiln. After other students kept taking his quirky little figures, he realized there was a market for them. "I'm enjoying the whole monster making niche," James says. "It's amazingly gratifying to be doing ceramics full time and especially to be a teacher introducing kids to the joy of clay." Be sure to visit his website and like his Facebook page for the latest monster news.

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