“Things Are Looking Up” Archival Print
Open edition archival print on Velvet Fine Art paper. Signed. Approximately 33x44 cm (13x17.5 inch) paper size with 28 x38.5 cm (11x15 inch) image.
Things are really looking up for this giant kitty as he spots an unsuspecting pigeon tengu riding by - easy prey! But gosh, we hope that pigeon tries looking up before its too late, or else folks are going to be in for quite an unexpected sight on the streets of Kofu!
For anyone interested in attending one of our ceramic wood-firing workshops here in the Japanese countryside, please check out kozy’s web shop for details and options! Learn the process of wood firing in a traditional anagama by joining our local community of ceramicists as we fire our large anagama in the Japanese countryside. It is a group effort to make this happen, so the more the merrier!
If you sign up for the workshop you will get to fire your work, make new work to fire at the local art complex Gasbon’s ceramic studio, as well as culinary and cultural adventures with the option to take workshops in other traditional crafts, visit temples, hiking to waterfalls, etc, etc.
You can stay in the guest suite of our 140 year old restored kominka in a rice farming village with its traditional garden and property that includes a bamboo forest and a creek. We work with you to try and customize the experience to your tastes and interests.
Kozy’s new collection of 114 hand-built “bunny primitive” ceramic sculptures is open now at Nucleus Portland and available online for purchase HERE! Each sculpture is a unique totem of sorts, with their own name and story, so you just have to find the own that speaks to you, or someone you love!
Her statement about the exhibition:
I began working with clay in 2011 in Los Angeles, discovering a new creative outlet that sparked a lasting passion. In 2018, while attending residencies in Japan, I was introduced to the art of wood-firing ceramics—an experience that resonated deeply with me. My husband, Dan, and I eventually moved to Japan in 2020, aiming to immerse ourselves in traditional Japanese crafts and establish a homestead farm and artist retreat, Peace Place Yamanashi.
Our retreat was centered around a 140-year-old farmhouse in the countryside, where I connected with local ceramicists who had built wood-fired kilns nearby. These artisans, now in their 70s and 80s, were contemplating retirement and even demolishing the kilns they had crafted, but I felt compelled to preserve this enchanting space.
Around the same time, an art book publishing company called Gasbook moved into the former Velbon tripod factory in our neighborhood, transforming it into a vibrant arts complex and residency known as “Gasbon.” Other ceramic artists and I took this opportunity to repurpose various gas, electric, and kerosene kilns from retiring ceramicists, eventually establishing a ceramics studio at Gasbon.
Meanwhile, the wood-firing kilns were set to be passed down to us, and the experienced kiln owners began teaching us how to prepare firewood and maintain the traditional kilns. Each winter, we venture into the mountains to cut red pine with chainsaws, transport the logs back to the kilns, and split them into firewood using log splitters and axes. The process is physically demanding and time-consuming, often requiring the wood to cure for up to a year. Reflecting on my life in Los Angeles, I never would have imagined becoming a lumberjack, but this hands-on labor has become an essential part of my practice.
Unlike electric kilns, where ceramics can be fired with the push of a button, wood-fired kilns introduce an element of unpredictability. My sculptures often break during firing, which initially caused disappointment. However, I learned the art of Kintsugi, the Japanese technique of mending broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered metal. The lacquer, known as urushi, can cause skin irritation similar to poison oak, but it serves as one of the oldest natural adhesives. This approach aligns with the Japanese concept of “mottainai,” a feeling of regret when something goes to waste without fully realizing its potential. Kintsugi allows ceramics to hold memories and sentimental value, transforming breakages into cherished features.
Now, instead of feeling discouraged when a sculpture breaks, I look forward to performing “Kintsugi surgery,” weaving stories of resilience and healing into my art. For this show, I collaborated with a local glaze specialist. I tested various glazes he mixed in six different wood-fired kilns for reduction firing. Some glazes are only for oxidation firing and require slow cooling, so I used the electric kiln at Gasbon for these glazes. Some pieces were fired in different kilns multiple times.
Embracing imperfection has become a philosophy I incorporate into my work and life. I find beauty in uniqueness and view flaws as features that add character. Accepting what I cannot control, I focus on shaping my responses and perceptions. Through my work, I hope to pass down the traditions of wood-firing ceramics and Kintsugi to future generations, keeping these beautiful, meaningful techniques alive and inspiring others to find strength and beauty in imperfection.
Check it out!
“Cutest Infestation” 2 Print Set
These prints are meant to be the start of a series perhaps, but at the very least make for a nice matching set! So if you want both “Kanazawa’s Cutest Infestation” and “Kofu’s Cutest Infestation”, you can get them for $10US less! Just a little thank you to us for your support of our work. Both prints are open edition archival prints on Velvet Fine Art paper. signed. The prints are matching size - approximately 33x44 cm (13x17.5 inch) paper size with 28 x38.5 cm (11x15 inch) image.
We have all heard about the famous “Rabbit Island” in Japan, but what if rabbits started to take over EVERYWHERE in Japan??! Something we wondered while doing some drawings based on typical Japanese storefronts.
Get the 2 Print Set in our WEB STORE!
This print is based on one of the images kozy drew for our “Memory Lane” exhibition.
Open edition archival print on Velvet Fine Art paper. Signed. Approximately 33x44 cm (13x17.5 inch) paper size with 28 x38.5 cm (11x15 inch) image.
We have all heard about the famous “Rabbit Island” in Japan, but what if rabbits started to take over EVERYWHERE in Japan??! This infestation was first noted inside an old coffee shop in Kofu, Yamanashi, where dozens of rabbits seemed to appear out of nowhere!
This print is based on one of the images kozy drew for our “Memory Lane” exhibition. This also goes well with the other image in the series “Kanazawa’s Cutest Infestation”. They can also be purchased HERE as a set for $10 less!
“Kanazawa’s Cutest Infestation”
Open edition archival print on Velvet Fine Art paper. Signed. Approximately 33x44 cm (13x17.5 inch) paper size with 28 x38.5 cm (11x15 inch) image.
We have all heard about the famous “Rabbit Island” in Japan, but what if rabbits started to take over EVERYWHERE in Japan??! Dan wondered this as he sketched out the many rabbits in front of this Kanazawa izakaya.
This print is based on one of the images kozy drew for our “Memory Lane” exhibition. This also goes well with the other image in the series “Kofu’s Cutest Infestation”. They can also be purchased HERE as a set for $10 less!
“The Cutest Infestation”
Pencil on Paper, 8 x 11 inches, 2025
I suppose it’s part of our lore that we had two rabbits back when we were still in college living in our first apartment together. Those #bunnies were our first models and thus quickly became a part of our art. Our first show at Giant Robot Store features several paintings of rabbits; I had taken to making lots of drawings of bunnies and kozy made paintings of some of them for that first exhibition as well as the NYC bunny infestation panoramic. To be honest, we never had a specific adoration of rabbits (beyond being animal lovers in general - we were always more cat people), but rabbits became something I would just doodle absent mindedly - they are the only subjects I can draw well enough to not be stressed about trying to get right, and I only ever can feel meditative and in the flow if I am drawing them. This is probably the only reason rabbits featured so heavily in our artwork over the years, and why I made the bunny wave artwork for the cover of Giant Robot Magazine back then.
Anyhow - given all this kozy thought it made sense to do a new bunny infestation for this series of drawings she was making and she did a really cute one!
These days the only time we see rabbits is when we go to this one cafe in our town that has rabbits just kind of hanging out in the dining room. Sometimes they run right by our feet - it’s so cute! They also have goats, and yep, some cats too, thankfully!
“Life In the Liminal Space Between Fuji-san and Yatsugatake”
A limited edition of 600 signed and numbered offset posters on a satin coated cover stock paper measuring 99x23cm (39 x 9 inches). Released in 2025.
Our 31st Panoramic artwork release (and our first new image inthe series in 12 years!) is the first to be set in Kofu, the prefectural capital city of kozy’s home prefecture, Yamanashi.
It is a nostalgic love letter to a bygone era (literally in this case, as the locally famous building in the panoramic that housed the department store Okajima was demolished while we were creating this a!rtwork!) as well as humorous roll call of characters (cartoon and historical alike) with origins in Yamanashi, as well a chance to make fantastical versions of some of our friends here.
A tomato vending machine backpack? Kozy forcing Dan to dress in Sailor Moon cosplay? Pigeon tengu? A six armed farmer woman? Giant dogs ridden by samurai and a massive grape mascot? A rabbit lighting a tanuki on fire? What does it all mean!??? I guess that is up for you, your family, and your friends to discuss!
We have a new exhibition entitled “Memory Lane” opening this weekend at Giant Robot’s GR2 Gallery in LA! Opening is Saturday April 19, 2025, 6:00 PM-9:00 PM PT, and the show is on view until May 6, 2025. Location: GR2 Gallery 2062 Sawtelle BIvd LA, CA 90025
It’s been a strange journey. With everything that has happened in the world since we started our career together almost a quarter century ago, and especially in the last five years, this past winter had us feeling a bit reflective and outright nostalgic for those simpler times when we first started working as kozyndan. The era before social media existed, the time before so much of our life revolved around our phones, when the threat of AI was still a science-fiction concept, before we had all experienced our first worldwide pandemic, when the US still pretended not to be racist at its core, and before billionaires had fully initiated their plan to create a Fascistic oligarchy there.
We started pouring through that work that launched our career when we were discovered by Giant Robot’s Eric Nakamura - those early panoramics and that style that we employed for our first book Urban Myths, that Giant Robot published. We have largely moved on from that specific aesthetic, and haven’t made a new panoramic in 12 years, but this mood of nostalgia had kozy itching to attempt a new one. We moved back to Kozy’s home prefecture of Yamanashi at the start of the panoramic so she could reconnect with her family and her home and her culture, so she wanted to take this opportunity to employ this “panoramic style” to highlight her Prefectural capital city, Kofu, and cultural icons (famous and not so famous) that hail from Yamanashi. In the past we have mainly done panoramic images set in the middle of big internationally famous cities (Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York, London, Amsterdam, Sydney, etc), but she wanted to give her home the same kind of treatment (even if it perhaps would have a more limited audience since few people outside of Yamanashi would care about Kofu). To most viewers the characters in the panoramic will be unknown - its hard to say which are wholly made up by us, and which are referencing local mascots, or local myths - although if one looks closely enough they will discover that some VERY famous characters origins have ties to Yamanashi!
Being a child in the 80’s in Japan, Showa era nostalgia runs deep in kozy (and indeed is becoming a huge trend in Japan in general these days), so we’ve casually documented Showa era storefronts and buildings that remain around Yamanashi and elsewhere in Japan for years. These reminders of a simpler time (and a more prosperous time perhaps) of her childhood made for perfect settings for the characters we created to inhabit them. It’s been a long time, but it was great to get back into that mode of looking at a real place and then concocting characters and stories to hide or center in that space, just like we were doing at the beginning of the century. Pulling from nature, fairy tales, pop culture, our real life friends, or just figments of our imagination, we transform the real life city scene kozy is drawing, or use the place as a backdrop for narratives that make us smile. I think this style of our early work was always about that - making us and our friends smile. That seems to be something we need a lot of these days.
Edition: 50 prints, signed and numbered
Fine Art Matte Paper
41 x 65 cm (16 x 26 inch) paper size with a 33.4 x 57 cm (13 x 22.4 inch) image area.
$150US
This print is of our most recent kakejiku nihonga painting and was inspired by the old wood timber frame joinery in our 140 year old farmhouse in the Japanese countryside, as well our young cats, who figured out they could ascend the columns like a tree trunk and have a whole new world to explore in the rafters over our heads. Like many of our cat paintings, almost all the cats are ours, or our friends’ cats. The cats are not, however, existing in one dimension, but we seem to be seeing multiple dimensions of cats and joinery in the same moment. It may seem to make sense to our perception and then not and back again - they appear to have their own kind of logic!
(Check out the process of making the original painting HERE)
