Asuka Ohsawa

Have you ever wondered what your cat is doing at home while you are off to work? This simple musing has led me to the idea of an astute cat who spends the day hours reading and researching. The girl and cat characters from my 2020 book Gone Fishin’ return for this soon-to-be series to talk about their latest book obsessions.

For the inaugural episode of the series, they geek out on the book entitled Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes, de diverses couleurs et figures extraordinaires, que l’on trouve autour des isles Moluques et sur les côtes des terres Australes (Fishes, crayfish and crabs, of various colors and extraordinary figures, which one finds around the Moluccas island and the coasts of the Austral lands) from 1754. The book was published by a Dutch publisher and bookseller Louis Renard who claimed himself to be a spy for the British Crown. The book is in the public domain, and the Biodiversity Heritage Library has written a fantastic essay on the book (you can find it here). I have downloaded the entire book and stared at all the illustrations for hours (if not for days).

Among the 460 hand-colored engravings of fish and crustacean species included in this book, I picked some of my favorites and reprinted them via Risograph. Flutter book. 5 X 7 in. 2023. Open edition.

The third installment of Pigeon Confidential explores the origin of pigeon photography in Germany (as well as the pros and cons of vegan pastries).

Risograph (printed with fluorescent pink, yellow, green, black, blue, and gold). Flutter book, with laminated paper covers. 5 X 7 in. 2023. Open edition.

This is a part of my ongoing investigation into the intersection of mathematics and art in the form of geometry. I cut a series of lino blocks of various geometric shapes and patterns (striped squares and circles, circle with dots, half circles, quarter circles, etc.) and printed them in different configurations using fluorescent yellow, pink, and blue. In addition to being mesmerized by the seemingly endless possibilities for generating new shapes and patterns through geometry, I am re-discovering the magic of printmaking in which layering of shapes and colors can yield unexpected results. This project is a form of play, an open-ended inquiry.

Printed from linoleum blocks on Vandercook. Sewn Board binding. 7" X 7". Edition of 15. 2022.

The pigeon pair from Pigeon Confidential returns to discuss their flamboyant relatives known as fancy pigeons and muse on the genetic potentials of the common species of the rock dove.

Risograph (printed with fluorescent pink, yellow, green, black, and blue). Flutter book, with laminated paper covers. 5 X 7 in. 2022. Open edition.

Pigeon Confidential is a true story based on American biologist Dr. Elizabeth Carlen’s research on urban pigeons in the Northeast. The zine contains a summary of her research recounted in the form of a conversation between two pigeons.

Risograph (printed with fluorescent pink, fluorescent orange, yellow, green, black, and blue). Flutter book, with laminated paper covers. 5 X 7 in. 2022. Open edition

I love the Trilobites section of the NY Times. Odd and fascinating stories of science featured in this section often fill me with a sense of wonder and awe, and they inspire me to daydream, doodle, and make comics. I have many favorites, one of which is the story of Japanese biologist Dr. Sugiura who discovered the amazing survival ability of tiny aquatic beetles Regimbartia Attenuata (Mamegamushi in Japanese). I love the fact that such small insects have their unique superpower to ensure their survival.

Risograph (printed with fluorescent orange, yellow, green, and blue). Flutter book, with laminated paper covers. 5 X 7 in. 2022. Open edition.

This letterpress print was done as a part of a portfolio exchange. The theme of the portfolio was "Public Pool", and I decided to appropriate David Hockney's Swimming Pool (1965) as well as the pattern of a swimming pool at his home in Los Angeles. Libuše Niklová's inflatable toy from 1974 also makes a cameo appearance.

Printed from polymer plate letterpress on French Paper. 10" X 10". Edition of 45. 2022.

One of my favorite artists’ books of all time is Sol LeWitt’s “Four Basic Kinds of Lines and Colour” (1977). As a printmaker, I am naturally drawn to the idea of repetition, seriality, and permutation, and Sol LeWitt’s book has opened up the possibility of using the sequential nature of the book as an organizational structure to explore these ideas.

I have been fascinated by half-square triangles and the seemingly infinite possibilities of patterns generated by them. To keep my exploration somewhat organized, I decided to use the four-patch quilt form, with each patch/square divided in half along a diagonal to form a triangle. There are four different ways that a half-square triangle can be oriented, and I gave a number (1, 2, 3, and 4) to each of the orientation possibilities. By using different combinations of the four numbers, new patterns can be generated. There are 256 mathematical combinations in total, and I recorded all of them in this book (a bit obsessive, I know).

During this investigation, I came across a French priest/ mathematician/engineer Sebastien Truche and his 1704 memoir entitled "Mémoire sur les Combinaisons." In the memoir, Truche recounted his trip to the city of Orléans, where he saw architectural tiles that were square and divided into two colors by a diagonal line. He was intrigued, and he set out to examine how many designs could be generated through the different arrangements of the tiles. His diagrams range from the simple arrangements of two tiles side by side to more elaborate and highly ornate patterns. They are very inspiring, and I am hoping to do something with some of his patterns in the future.

Pochoir with rubber-stamp ink. 512 pages. Edition of 3.

Art as Healing is a collaborative zine published by a group of Asian/Asian American students and faculty at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts University.

In the wake of the national surge in anti-Asian violence set off by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, we came together to discuss how to support each other and our targeted communities. Our intensified awareness of the systemic absence of Asian American histories, sensibilities and realities in many U.S. institutions -- including those involved with art and art education -- led to our decision to create a zine as one way to give visibility to our diverse Asian American experiences. With the help of the Daynard Microgrants for Collaborations in Racial Justice, the zine was collectively planned and created over four months in 2021.

Contributing artists include Maxine Bell; Aidan Sky Chang; Amy Chu; Luna Doherty-Ryoke; Maria Fong; Hannah Kim; Quin Luong; John McKean; Ava Sakamoto; Priya Skelly; Kelly Tan; Martina Tan; Khanh Keith Truong; and Angela Wei. Professor Jean Wu and I contributed a short essay for the publication.

Special shoutout to Little Mountain Press in New York for doing a fabulous job of printing our zines. 2-color Risograph, 8.5 “ X 11”, edition of 130. $35 (suggested donation). Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing.

Food Pasts, Food Futures: The Culinary History of COVID-19 is a fictional syllabus created in 2020 by the Global Experimental Historiography Collective, a multidisciplinary initiative (housed at Harvard but engaged in teaching and research worldwide) that seeks to explore the bounds of humanistic methods. The Collective consists of Stav Bejerano, Caroline Castleman, Mika Hyman, Jasper Jarecki, Alissa Nalewajko, and Peter Schmidt, and is chaired by Madeleine Marcel, Harvard’s Firmenich Professor of Sensory Sciences.

The syllabus was originally published in the Public Domain Review (https://publicdomainreview.org/) under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. The images were appropriated from Kittens and Cats: A First Reader (1911) and added to the syllabus by me for the purpose of saturating the world with more cat images (syllabi look much more interesting when there are lots of cat images).

I made this zine to give away to my students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston at the end of a long Zoom semester in the spring of 2021. Inkjet print, 8.5” X 11”. Open edition.

Continuing with the theme of triangles, I became curious about how triangles have been used in traditional Japanese textile design. Uroko patterns consist of equilateral or isosceles triangles, and they are called Uroko because they look like fish or snake scales. The pattern appears on the costume of a demonic woman in the form of a snake in Kabuki and Noh plays. The pattern is also used as a protective charm against misfortune.

Based on the traditional motifs of Uroko patterns, I had great fun reinterpreting them and creating new patterns.

Screenprinted on French Paper. Drumleaf binding with modified drop spine covers. 9” X 6”. Edition of 5. 2021.

Sending new year’s greeting card is an annual tradition in Japan. Nowadays most people use store-bought postcards or use digital templates/digital printing services. But I have been stubbornly keeping the tradition of making handmade cards for over 40 years (minus some years when someone in my family passed away). I knew that most of my friends were refraining from traveling due to the pandemic, so I wanted to make mail art that would hopefully entertain them at home.

A single-sheet booklet. 8.5” X 11”. Inkjet print. Open edition.

Squares, Triangles, & Cats is an online comic/free downloadable PDF project that I did with Art Journal Open.

What would cats do if they have the dexterity of human hands? Aside from plotting (and possibly succeeding in) world domination , the idea of cats making their living quarters extra plushy and cozy felt like a plausible one.

This Risograph zine was put together rather quickly. All the images were made during a 4.5 hour train ride between NYC and Boston. The pages were printed via Risograph in Boston and hand-bound in Brooklyn. Special thanks to SunNight Editions in Oakland for screenprinting the cover. I am very happy that I got this project done right before everything shut down for COVID-19.

10-page mini zine. 5” X 7”. Japanese album binding. Edition of 27. 2020.

A habit of collecting is a strange thing. In the name of “visual reference”, I’ve accumulated boxes and boxes of printed ephemera as well as photographic references in my computer. Admission tickets, hand-written notes, cigarette packages, somebody else’s drawings, pieces of textile - they have been scanned in and printed somewhat randomly on top of one another using a Risograph machine.

This project was made possible by the generous support of the RisoLAB at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Risograph, 10 X 7 inch (spread). 2019

This book project was inspired by one of my favorite works of art of all time entitled “Kidai Shoran”, an early 19th-century Japanese emaki (scroll painting) by an unknown artist. The scroll depicts a panoramic view of the busy Nihonbashi main street lined with shops and a crowd of consumers and city dwellers. My original idea was to simply incorporate the panoramic landscape format of Japanese emaki into a codex form. During the five months process of drawing and printing, however, the book morphed into a hybrid form that is part emaki, part comics, and part typographic adventure.

Screenprinted on Rives Heavyweight paper. 12 X 9 inch (spread). Drum-leaf bound with a drop-spine cover. Edition of 20. 2019-2020.

I’ve always had the habit of doodling and writing in notebooks, but it wasn’t until 2014 that I began to take this habit very seriously. My renewed interest was triggered by Lynda Barry and her use of notebooks as an investigative tool to dig up stories buried deep in our memories. I’ve filled notebook after notebook since then, and when I finally read some of them in 2018, what emerged was an overarching narrative of losses, self-doubt, and the desire for transformation. The story for Moon Express came out this experience of intense self-reflection.

The original text and images were printed using screenprint. Hardcover with gold foil print. Edition of 23. 2018.

Following the death of my father in 2016, I traveled back and forth between the US and Japan to take care of his estates. Digging through his material possessions, I uncovered photographs, letters, and many other objects that brought back the memories of my childhood in Japan. I compiled a vast collection of visual images and stories, which ended up with spawning multiple projects, including this set of 20 prints. The prints are available individually or as a box set. Screenprint, 9 X 12 in, Edition of 15.

Memory often has a funny way of resurfacing. During a holiday visit with my parents in 2014, I was watching a popular Japanese TV drama series on NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai, or Japan Broadcasting Corporation), which triggered the memories of Anne of Green Gables and my long lost childhood dream. 2-color Risograph, 16 pages, 5 X 7 in, edition of 50, 2018. Printed at Retro Insatsu Jam in Osaka, Japan.

When I moved to Oakland, California, in 2014, I was fascinated by the diverse assortment of characters that I saw in my neighborhood. Whenever I encountered people that captured my attention in local cafes, on the street, on the train, etc, l would stare at them as long as I could so as to commit their facial features to my memory, go home, and draw them. The original gouache-on-paper drawings were converted to screenprints by Nat Swope, one of the best printers in the Bay Area and the owner/printer of Bloom Press in Oakland. Screenprint, 5 X 7 in, Edition of 100.

Installation for the 32nd Graphic Arts Biennale, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2017. The project was inspired by the last letter my father wrote shortly before he passed away in 2016. I asked the audience to contemplate on what makes their life worth living, write down their thoughts on a piece of paper, and pin it on the wall to share in exchange for taking one of my prints on the wall. 1,900 people left their responses during the 3 month duration of the installation.

Screenprint and letterpress. 4 X 6 in. Edition of 3000.

Following the death of my father in 2016, I traveled back and forth between the US and Japan to take care of his estates. Digging through his material possessions, I uncovered photographs, letters, and many other objects that brought back the memories of my childhood in Japan. I compiled a vast collection of visual images and stories, which ended up with spawning multiple projects. Screenprint, 5 X 7 in, Edition of 50.

Carl Sagan said, “If you wish to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” This 16-page comic features twin alien sisters who didn’t quite create the universe but created a new planet filled with animals and plants, including apple trees. 2-color Risograph, 7.5 X 10.25 in, edition of 50, 2017. Printed at Retro Insatsu Jam in Osaka, Japan.

Life can be extremely challenging from time to time. Drawing inspiration from the song My Favorite Things from the Sound of Music, I thought about my favorite things to cheer myself up. As it turned out, my list of favorite things was quite extensive. Not everything on the list could be included in this zine, so there may be a sequel in the future….. 5 X 7 inches, risograph, edition of 50. Printed at Retro Insatsu Jam in Osaka, Japan.

I was one of the 5 featured artists for the annual Road Works event at the Center for the Book, San Francisco, California. I carved a 36” X 36” linoleum block, and the plate was printed via a 12-ton 1916 Kelly Springfield steamroller. Edition of 5. The prints were sold to raise funds for the SFCB.

Good Day is a wordless picture book loosely based on the story of Alice in Wonderland. The cover is letterpress and the content was printed digitally. 5 X 7 in, edition of 50.

A personal rant about my neighborhood kid in Oakland who sold me a very expensive cup of “artisanal” lemonade. Printed via letterpress (polymer plates). 5 X 7 in. Edition of 40.

When I first moved to Oakland in 2014, I kept a journal of things, people, and events that caught my attention in my neighborhood. Keeping the record of mundane observations of daily lives in Oakland was my own way of getting to know this enigmatic city. Some excerpts from such observations are compiled in this zine. Printed via letterpress (polymer plates and linocut), 5 X 7 in, edition of 27.

Tease It to Jesus is a collaborative portfolio of 35 printed portraits of Dolly Parton. The project was organized by Margot Ecke of Smokey Road Press and premiered at the Southern Graphics Council annual conference in March 2015 at University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The exhibition traveled to several different locations including Pioneer House (Knoxville, TN), Smokey Road Press (Athens, Georgia), Asheville Bookworks (Asheville, North Carolina), and Webb Gallery (Waxahachie, TX).

The portfolio includes the works of the following amazing printmakers: John Hitchcock, Sage Perrott, Erika Adams, Kathryn Polk, Andrew Polk, Brett Anderson, Emily Cummings, Samantha Mosby Belcher, John Hancock, Margot Ecke, Raluca Iancu, Yoonmi Nam, Lily Smith-Kirkley, Katherine Woolhouse, Jamie Karolich, Jen Scheuer, Shelly DiCello Ahern, Heather O'Hara, Jay Jarvis, John Stidham, Sean P. Morrissey, Justin Plakas, Rhonda Ratray, Linda Lucía Santana, Asuka Ohsawa, Rory Sparks, Dan Hood, Beth Schaible, Eleanor Annand, Johanna Mueller, Zoë Klosterboer, Jay Fox, Emily Arthur, Maren Munoz, Emily Adams and Jason Burnett.

12.5” X 12.5”, Letterperss, Edition of 50.

An illustrated collection of haiku poems that I wrote during my trip to Finland in the summer of 2014. It was printed via letterpress (handset type and linocut). 5 X 7 in, edition of 33.

A collaborative book project that I organized with 5 other NYC-based female artists (Stephanie Beck, Jessica Lagunas, Ana Paula Cordeiro, Roni Gross, and Sarah Nicholls). So incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to work with such talented artists with unique voices. Letterpress (handset type, polymer plates, lino cut), 6 X 6 in, Edition of 10.