KOBO Seattle | since 1995
Artist Bios
Junko Yamamoto is a Tokyo-born multimedia artist whose work explores the concept of unity as a whole. While her primary medium is oil painting, she also creates prints and mixed-media installations. Junko earned a BFA, cum laude, from Cornish College of the Arts, where she collaborated with the multimedia performance group Degenerate Art Ensemble as a photographer and in performance production.
Her work has been exhibited at Out of Sight, the Seattle Asian Art Museum, ARTS at King Street Station, 3331 Arts Chiyoda in Tokyo, and Gallery 4Culture. Her paintings are included in collections at the Judge Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center, Bellevue Mini City Hall, Harborview Medical Center, Swedish Medical Center, UW School of Medicine, Microsoft and Google. Recently, her work has also been featured on Chateau Ste. Michelle’s Artist Series wine labels.
Junko has taught numerous workshops at institutions such as the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Asian Art Museum, and Gage Academy, as well as through Carla Sonheim’s online courses. During her solo exhibition at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Westcott House in Springfield, Ohio, she also delivered a lecture at the Dayton Art Institute.
She has received an Individual Artist Grant from 4Culture, an Emerging Artist Grant Award from the Allied Arts Foundation, and was awarded a residency at the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Wyoming. She was also invited to participate in the Professional Artist in Residence Program at Pratt Fine Arts Center. Junko is represented by J. Rinehart Gallery in Seattle.
https://www.instagram.com/junkoyamamotostudio/
Born in 1985 in Okazaki, Japan, Kakeru Asai is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans sculpture, painting, drawing, and installation. At the age of eight, he began learning painting under the guidance of his father, laying the foundation for a lifelong passion for artistic exploration. After graduating from high school, Asai relocated to New York City to further develop his studio practice.
Drawing inspiration from the natural world and the cosmos—leaves, flowers, insects, shells, and celestial imagery captured by NASA’s telescopes—Asai creates vibrant, dreamlike compositions that bridge the vastness of the universe with his inner world. Employing innovative techniques, such as blowing paint onto surfaces to mimic organic patterns, he reflects the rhythms of nature and the cosmos. His work invites viewers to immerse themselves in awe, offering a wonderland where they can explore the sublime beauty of the universe.
Asai first exhibited in New York in 2012, earning the Martha T. Rosen Award that same year. Since 2013, he has been an active member of Art Beasties, an art collective, with his work featured in group exhibitions in New York, Seattle, Hong Kong, and Japan. Through his art, Asai continues to weave together the tangible and the cosmic, creating spaces that inspire wonder and connection.
https://www.instagram.com/kakeruru/
Maho Hikino is a creator of video installations and art projects exploring themes of the reproduction and loss of senses, memories, textures, movement. She was born in Hyogo, Japan. Her B.A. in Liberal Arts was received from Doshisha Women's College, Kyoto in 2008 and earned a Master of Arts degree from Tama Art University, Tokyo in 2010. Subsequent to that She lived and worked in Tokyo, producing video installations and art projects. And she moved to New York City in 2013 for working and exhibiting her-self art project.
She made a Japanese artist collective; ART BEASTIES(http://artbeasties.com/) in NYC 2013. Through hosting pop-up shows and curating an online registrar of Japanese artists, seeks to broaden and deepen the understanding of contemporary Japanese art to an international audience.
Statement:
What I wish to capture is the beauty that originally exists in the world: texture, movement, sense, memory. From moment to moment they undergo continuous change, and invariably they will be lost.
Media art, to me, is an attempt to reproduce and reconstruct them. And media is the vehicle connecting me with the world. Digital video, for instance, theoretically enables perpetual preservation and reproduction, and yet how are we to play back or reproduce the senses and feelings that ought to have been there as well?
Through beauty/Art (Geijutsu), I pursue our fundamental desire to know the truth.
Because in this world where everything changes, where everything will be lost, it is this desire and this desire alone that has the potential to answer the question, Why must we be here?
"We have art in order not to die of the truth." Friedrich Nietzsche
https://www.instagram.com/mahohik/
Masaya Nakayama (b. 1983) is a Japanese artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Osaka University of Arts in 2005 with a degree in Fine Arts, specializing in painting. After working as an art teacher at a public junior high school in Osaka, he moved to the United States in 2012. Currently, he showcases his works in galleries and art fairs.
In recent years, his works have frequently appeared in collaborations with fashion brands and companies. In 2019, he gained widespread recognition for creating a mural commissioned by Brooklyn Brewery, one of New York’s leading craft breweries. His collaboration with 7th Street Burger in New York has also been well received.
Nakayama is also the co-founder of Coperus, a Japanese artist collective based in New York and Tokyo. Established in 2018 with the mission of "for the children," Coperus actively addresses contemporary societal issues, striving to create a brighter future for the next generation.
https://www.instagram.com/msynkyma/
Yoshiyuki Paul Komada was born in Seattle and raised in Yokohama, Japan. At the age of 14, his family relocated to Seattle, disrupting his familiar environment and verbal communication skills. The isolation he experienced during those formative years in American schools sparked his interest in electronic music and later manifested as a deep affinity for “abstract” art.
In 2002, Komada earned an MFA in painting from the University of Pennsylvania. Between 2003 and 2006, he immersed himself in work at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo. This sojourn in Japan heightened his awareness of dual citizenship and cultivated a bilingual/bicultural perspective of the world. Presently, he resides and works in Pioneer Square, Seattle.
Although Komada’s Works are rooted in the conventions of “painting,” he introduced knit fabrics into his creations when he embraced knitting as an alternative to painting while being a stay-at-home father for his son. This shift in the medium empowered him to redefine the boundaries between “Art, Craft, and Design,” initiating his quest for artistic “hybridity.” Over the years, Komada has delved into the possibilities of painting by incorporating various digital tools into his workflow, such as chroma key, field recording, and video. He also crafts soundtracks for his videos using modular synthesizers.
Currently, Komada shares his knowledge as a teacher at North Seattle College. While imparting artistic skills, he reflects on the relevance and utility of “Abstract Art” in contemporary society — pondering how the creation of art can contribute to shaping a better world.
https://www.instagram.com/paulkomada/
Yuki Nakamura is a Japanese-born artist based in London, whose practice is deeply rooted in clay and ceramic art. Through mixed media, site-specific installations, and digital innovation, she expands the possibilities of ceramics to create immersive, interactive works that challenge traditional boundaries and engage materiality within contemporary art.
Yuki has received numerous awards, including the Pollock-Krasner Grant, Artist Trust Fellowship, and Joshibi Creative and Research Fellowship. She holds a BFA from Joshibi University of Art and Design (Japan), an MFA from the University of Washington (USA), and an MRes in Creative Practice from the University of Westminster (UK), where she explored clay’s tactile and material agency as an active collaborator, emphasizing embodied interaction and collaborative workshops. She will begin her PhD at the University of Westminster in September 2025, focusing on embodiment, place, and participatory practice, situating clay within post-digital, cross-cultural contexts.
Yuki is participating in the 2025 Brent Biennial in London, titled Bones, Stones, and Calling the Four Elements, unfolding through four ‘rituals’ — Water, Earth, Fire, and Air — from June 22 to October 24, bringing together artists and community organizers.
Her latest public art project features 13 sculptural benches with fluid, organic forms, installed at Overlake Village Plaza, a new light rail station connecting downtown Seattle and the Microsoft campus in Redmond, USA.
Yuki teaches Ceramics at Morley College, London, and contributes writing to Design Stories, a Paris-based Japanese online magazine.
https://www.instagram.com/ynstudioart/
