Yuko Shimizu is a super-talented illustrator who lives in NYC. Her
self-titled monograph came out about a month ago, and is full of provocative surrealistic comic art drawn first with traditional calligraphy brushes, overlaid with digital color and background to look like graphic prints. Super cool. I first met Yuko when I was working on the
Studio360 piece about women artists in Japan. She told me that she had always drawn erotic women, but didn't realize she was a feminist until she came to the US for art school and her teachers asked her to analyze her own art for the first time. (The Western tendency to analyze is different from Japan, where it's more common to simply appreciate the aesthetic value of a piece.)
When Amy Winehouse died this summer, one niggling rumor accompanied the public shows of grief and condemnation -- that the disturbed singer purposely killed herself to join the group of famous musicians known collectively as "the 27 club" -- Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Brian Jones, Robert Johnson and Jim Morrison. They all died at 27, just as Amy Winehouse did this year. The legend they spurred was blamed for introducing the fatal idea of a "right" age for sealing one's immortality.