Born and raised in Toba, Japan, Yoskay Yamamoto moved to the United States at the age of 15. 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.
“Woodcarving is the newest skill that I picked up for my sculptural work. Wood is more challenging than other materials that I use, but I love the organic look of the final product. When working with clay, you can always add more mass and volume as you need it. But when you are carving, once you take a piece off, that’s it. You can’t undo it. I learned by trial and error, gaining a few scars on my left hand along the way. Now I wear cut-resistant gloves to protect my hands.” – Yoskay Yamamoto (Other People’s Pixels)
“My fiancé and I are staring a company called “sunny side up studio” which focuses on house hold items with a unique design. Our first project is a piece of pottery called “pothead” and we are working with a Portland company, Mudshark. I have designed vinyl toys for a couple of different companies in the past few years and the experiences have been great, but all of my toys have been made overseas in China. With our new company we wanted to make our product domestically and working with the good folks of Mudshark is one thing we are so happy about for the new project. In the long run we want to create not only my designs but to collaborate with my friends and artists that we admire and love.” – Yoskay Yamamoto (WOW x WOW)
