Yuko Shimizu
Yuko Shimizu is an illustrator, fine artist and educator at School of Visual Arts, New York.
Drawing had been Shimizu’s hobby ever since she was a child. However, growing up in a traditional Japanese family, pursuing a path in art was just not an option. After receiving BA in advertising and marketing – the most creative of the practical field – from Waseda University she landed on a position in PR for a big corporation in Tokyo.
It never made her quite happy, and she was in a mid-life crisis at age of 22.
It still took Shimizu more than 10 years before she figured out what she really wanted to do and to save just enough so she could go back to school full time for 4 more years.
So Shimizu came back to New York in 1999, where she briefly spent her childhood, and enrolled in School of Visual Arts (SVA). Shimizu graduated with MFA from Illustration as Visual Essay Program in 2003 and has been illustrating since. She also teaches a BFA Illustration course and occasionally advises MFA students at SVA.
She works in a studio in Manhattan, a space she shares with two artists whom she considers as her ‘New York family’. Shimizu has not gotten into mid-life crisis since she became an artist.
Whenever she has time, Yuko Shimizu loves to travel to different cities and countries to lectures at art schools and events, and to meet with other artists, professors and young aspiring illustrators to get inspired.
If you like Yuko Shimizu, then you'll also dig this:
August 10, 2007 | New Illustration | 
by Zolton |
New York-based Japanese illustrator Yuko Shimizu has been featured on Lost At E Minor several times over the past couple of years. I love the sense of drama her work conveys, the apparent colour clashes that somehow gel despite pre-existing rules about their compatibility. We checked in with her to see what she’s been up to of late: ‘I just came back from a week in Georgian Bay in Canada. No internet, no cell phone reception for a week. It was fantastic! Now I am getting ready for a group show at Visual Arts Gallery in New York that opens in September. I am creating two new 40” x 60” drawings. I’m also slowly refurbishing my website here and there’. Read more
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September 17, 2007 | New Photography | by Zolton |
Says New York-based illustrator Yuko Shimizu on the work of artist Marilyn Minter: ‘I was extremely lucky to be able to study fine arts with Marilyn Minter as my professor before she became too busy and stopped teaching the course. She was brutally honest about students work, which sometimes made me cry but made me grow like nobody else did. I owe her a lot’. Read more
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October 9, 2007 | New Events | by Marcos Chin |
A few weeks back, I went to a show at the School of Visual Arts Gallery in Chelsea, New York to see an exhibit called Super Phat. It was a multimedia art presentation featuring the work of over 40 of SVA’s Japanese alumni and alumni living in Japan. Among them were two large and gorgeous drawings by my friend and studio-mate, Yuko Shimizu. Her work never fails to astound me. Yuko’s pieces entitled The Wild Wild Chase and The Rodeo Drive transplants her striped swim-suited characters into a Western inspired realm where they are met by horned and furry hooved monsters. Magnificent. [read an interview with Yuko Shimizu and check out the posts she has written for Lost At E Minor]
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December 6, 2007 | New Illustration | by Zolton |
I was rulking (half-run; half-walk) through the inner city a little while back, killing time and thoughts with mindless banter (yes, one way conversations have their benefits) when I noticed a grown man crying hysterically on the opposite side of the road to me. Read more
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April 9, 2008 | New Illustration | by Zolton |
New York-based illustrator, and regular Lost at E Minor contributor, Yuko Shimizu is heading to Philadelphia to give a lecture and attend the opening of an exhibition of her illustrations at The University of The Arts this Thursday. Read more
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July 15, 2008 | New Illustration | by Zolton |
We checked in with one of our favourite illustrators, Yuko Shimizu, recently: How are you dealing with the mugginess of the New York summer? ‘I am originally from Tokyo, where humidity is a lot higher in general, and summer temperature can go a lot higher’. Read more
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August 26, 2008 | Cool Travel | by Zolton |
I’ve worked with the brilliant New York-based illustrator — and Lost At E Minor contributor — Yuko Shimizu remotely for some years now. But despite the fact that we live in the same city, we’ve only met up once — at a group exhibition that she was a part of at a Chelsea gallery. Read more
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October 28, 2008 | Video | 
by Yuko Shimizu 
|
My friend and artist Emily Gearhart just sent me this video. It’s probably the funniest video I have ever seen. Oh, what a great way to remind your friends to vote. You can customise it with your friend’s name and then send it out them. Fun, fun, fun.
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January 17, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Zolton |
As part of the Robin Hood Foundation, a charity organization whose mission it is to fight poverty in New York City, Lost At E Minor contributor and in-demand illustrator in her own right, Yuko Shimizu — in collaboration with designer Stefan Sagmeister — recently completed an eleven panel mural at PS96 in The Bronx. Read more
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June 17, 2009 | New Illustration | by Zolton |
I love the bold use of color and dramatic thematic overtones that characterises the work of New York-based illustrator, and Lost At E Minor contributor, Yuko Shimizu. This award-winning piece was for Microsoft’s Ultimate PC project, in which artists were asked to create series of five personal works using their PC instead of their Mac to showcase in Microsoft’s new experimental art site.
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Saira McLaren is a Canadian born, Brooklyn-based artist whose blurred paintings of the natural and spiritual world are disturbing for what they reference as well as what they deny. McLaren has shown at Heskin Contemporary, New York, NY, Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, and Mississippi State University. Read more
While Flushing is still the place to go for the best Chinese food in New York City, those for whom the hour-long subway ride on the 7 is simply out of the question on most nights can now get their mapo tofu fix right in Manhattan. While the masses queue out the door at Joe’s Shanghai across the street, Famous Sichuan offers real-deal Sichuanese food such as cold sliced beef tendon in chili sauce, braised fish fillet with napa cabbage and roasted chili, and the most delicious cumin lamb this side of the East River. Read more
New York-based eco-line Loomstate create the coolest tees made of organic cotton. Each printed t-shirt not only celebrates nature but is stylishly crafted, with contrasting stitching coupled with signature twisted side seams for a sleek fit. My favourite is the Seabra design [pictured below]. And, boys, don’t fret because Loomstate cater for males, too. Read more
Gonzales’ gentle piano reworking of the beautiful Feist soliloquy, One Evening, trickles through my headphones like the sweetest sprinkle of mid-winter sunshine.
Our friends over at Sex In Art recently posted the work of Japanese artist Aya Kato. Says Justin, the founder of the site: ‘I have this folder on my desktop titled Cool Shiat. It’s where I save all the inspirational images I find on the net. I’ve just finished filling it up with Aya Kato’s amazing images. Argh wow. Wow, wow, wow. I won’t say anymore. Just check her work out for yourself’. Read more
I remember the first time I saw a Mark Rothko piece at the Art Institute in Chicago. I’d only seen reproductions until that point, and I never understood why people considered the late painter so important. Read more
Japanese artist Toshiya Tsunoda’s field recordings will blow your mind without blowing your eardrums. By placing sensitive microphones inside empty objects, such as bottles and hollow logs, he captures vibrations inaudible to the human ear. Layers of these sounds are artfully cut and composed to produce brute, mesmerising work that challenges our perception of music. Read more
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Charlie Immer’s pastel-pallete sometimes obfuscates the gory violence in his surreal images. At other times, it heightens the gut-wrenching and visceral effect of his work. Read more
Yum, yum, cupcakes are fun. These creations are so clever, so arty, so damn bizarre that it would almost be a shame to eat them. Almost! Read more
Alex Passapera’s dizzying pen and ink drawings are cascades of images melting into one another, often looking like contorting, mutating creatures spewing blood-like ink splatters. Read more
With the recession still biting, it may be time to whip out the glue and the cardboard and make your next pair of cool kicks. Don’t know how they’d manage in the rain though? Read more
Thanks to Sony Australia, four Lost At E Minor readers will win personal audio prizes, including the new 8GB Walkman S series video MP3 player and the MDRXB500 Extra Bass headphones. Read more
This pendant by Portland designer Stephanie Stimek hangs from an eighteen inch 14 carat gold chain. Made from a Japanese quail egg, the entire shell has been coated in plastic for strength and is available for purchase through the Lost At E Minor store. Read more
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