Artist Decoded by Yoshino

Jan Hopkins is a master at creating sculptural vessels and figurative sculptures from unusual natural materials such as citrus, melon and pomegranate peels, lotus pods, fish skin, leaves, and seed pods. Each piece is a marriage of deep sensitivity and reverence to materials with a heavy emphasis on concept and innovation. Jan studied basketry with indigenous and contemporary artists, learning the...

Mitch Horowitz is a historian of alternative spirituality and one of today's most literate voices of esoterica, mysticism, and the occult. He is among the few occult writers whose work touches the bases of academic scholarship, national journalism, and subculture cred. Mitch is a writer-in-residence at the New York Public Library, lecturer-in-residence at the Philosophical Research Society in Los...

Damon Davis is a post-disciplinary artist based in St. Louis, Missouri. His work spans across a spectrum of creative mediums to tell stories exploring how identity is informed by power and mythology. He is well known for his body of work, Darker Gods, which explores Afro-surrealist manifestations of Black culture. Davis is a Firelight Media, Sundance Labs, TED, and Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fe...

Born in Beijing and raised in Singapore, Jingna Zhang is a fashion and fine art photographer and director based in New York City and Seattle. Imbued with love for the Pre-Raphaelites and Japanese anime, Jingna's work interweaves Asian aesthetics with western art styles, bringing unique visions of painterly and fantastical images to fashion and fine art photography. Before photography, Jingna was a...

Graham grew up in Ojai, a small ranching town in Southern California with pink sunsets dipping below the mountains.  He spent his childhood exploring Europe and the Southwestern United States with his travel writer father and family. His upbringing informs his photography, which is largely based in simplicity, nostalgia, nature, and the truth of a moment. Graham lives in Los Angeles with his wife,...

AD Non-Weekly Round Up #8 with artist, Jesse Draxler, and Yoshino. Jesse Draxler was born in rural Wisconsin, studied in Minneapolis, MN, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. A formal mixed media & inter-disciplinary artist, Draxler has exhibited extensively both domestically and internationally.  Draxler collaborates with brands including Hugo Boss, McQ Alexander McQueen, and Ferrari...

Nadia Waheed, BFA 2015 School of the Art Institute of Chicago, is a Pakistani-American painter who makes partially autobiographical allegorical figurative paintings that explore selfhood, choice, and cultural trauma. Exhibition history includes shows with Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami, BEERS London, Thierry Goldberg in New York, and Gallery 1957 in London. Upcoming exhibitions in 2021 include sho...

The son of Chinese immigrants, Nicholas came to LA by way of Hawaii and Hong Kong. Working as a truly international director, he has helmed global campaigns for brands like Google, Samsung, Disney, P&G, Kia, Dewars, and Nestle, working closely with top agencies such as BBDO, Ogilvy & Mather, and Iris Worldwide. In the music world, he is an MTV VMA nominated director having shot videos for Nick Jon...

Justin Daashuur Hopkins is a multidisciplinary storyteller (Director and Cinematographer, Musician and Composer, Graphic Designer, and Gallerist). Born into an artistic household, to renowned Illustrator Chris Hopkins and internationally collected sculptor Jan Hopkins, Justin was raised in Mukilteo, Washington, but now lives and works in Los Angeles. At the age of fifteen, he was already doing pro...

Johan Van Mullem (Belgian painter born in 1959) persisted in his youthful search for wrinkled faces, seeking the beauty he recognized in an experience engraved on the faces and in the hands. Since then, the face remains the major subject of his work but over time reversing the imprint of it on his own face while these subjects seem to rejuvenate, disappearing or emerging in a halo of light in old-...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Mauro Martinez juxtaposes common pictorial forms from art history with the monotonous streams of online imagery that we, as an increasingly digital society, are so often subjected to. Skillfully utilizing metaphor, irony, and dark humor, Martinez's paintings respond to the doctrines of internet culture, at once critiquing and mocking our relationship with contemporary...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Lorne Lanning is an American game designer, director, writer, and voice actor. He is co-founder and creator of Oddworld Inhabitants. He is best known for creating the Oddworld series including the games Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, and Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty. The next Oddworld game titled Odd...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Dr. Bruce Hoffman did not choose the Medical Arts as a vocation. Originally, he wanted to be a writer and poet. His interest in health and healing developed later in life, after a long and winding road of self-discovery, life experience, and learning. He only applied to medical school, so he could complete a residency in psychiatry and subsequently study Jungian analy...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Jesse Damiani is a writer, curator, and cultural producer living in Los Angeles, CA. He covers art, media, and technology on Forbes, and serves as  . Other writing appears in Billboard, Entrepreneur, Quartz, The Verge, and WIRED. He has consulted with Google, Oculus, and the Sundance Institute, and served as a mentor in the YouTube VR Creator Lab. He is also Founder a...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Nolwen is a first-generation Colombian-French photographer and director, working in Los Angeles. As a mixed-race queer woman, her identity plays an active role in the type of narratives she is drawn to. Her interests lie in shifting social consciousness, breaking down gender norms, and representation. Exploring portraiture within the landscape of American culture, Nol...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Brian Booth Craig (b. 1968; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is a contemporary American representational sculptor. Sculpting from life and imagination, Brian's work translates traditional techniques into depictions of contemporary human presence, capturing moments of individual self-assertion. Through ambiguous actions, surprising talismans, and subtle gestures, Brian endeav...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Vanessa Prager (b. 1984) is an American artist, born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. Known mainly for her large-scale, abstract oil paintings, Prager's main subject is the female figure. Thick, loose, heavily impastoed bodies melt in and out of their form, and what we consider beauty and identity is often a central theme to her work. Prager has had solo shows at The Ho...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Julian Doan is a second-generation Vietnamese American filmmaker. He enjoys exploring the uncomfortable corners of our existence through awkward, yet heartfelt comedy. His past projects include the sentient zombie digital series "Everyone I Love Is Dead". He is currently working on the editorial team of HBO's "In Treatment". He loves the great outdoors and looks forwa...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Mark Wolynn is the director of the Family Constellation Institute in San Francisco. He is a leading expert in the field of inherited family trauma. His book It Didn't Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle (published by Viking/Penguin) is the winner of the 2016 Silver Nautilus Book Award in psychology and has been transl...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded When a musical ensemble chooses to self-title an album mid-career, it usually signifies their conviction that they've struck upon the motherlode, hit the jackpot, stepped up, and generally arrived at a point they've always strived for but never quite attained. Coming from GoGo Penguin at this stage in the game, it's quite a bold statement: the instrumental trio from M...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Shari Frilot is a filmmaker who has produced television for the CBS affiliate in Boston and for WNYC and WNET in New York before creating her own independent award-winning films, including Strange & Charmed, A Cosmic Demonstration of Sexuality, What Is A Line?, and the feature documentary, Black Nations / Queer Nations? She is the recipient of multiple grants, includi...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Mark Henick is an internationally recognized mental health strategist, advocate, speaker, podcaster, and media commentator. His TEDx talk is one of the most-watched in the world. He regularly speaks to diverse audiences about mental health, hope, and recovery.   Mark Henick's TEDx talk about being saved from death by a stranger is one of the most-watched in the world...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Sean Cheetham was born in 1977 in San Francisco, studied at the College of San Mateo, in California, and earned a B.F.A. degree with honors from Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, California. His paintings have been included in numerous significant exhibitions internationally including the National Portrait Gallery in London. He has a devoted following of coll...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Laura Fried is a Los Angeles-based curator and is a Co-Founder and Director of Active Cultures, a nonprofit organization that explores the convergence of food and art in contemporary life. Through collaborative projects by cooks and artists, Active Cultures' programming takes a multitude of forms such as performances, workshops, meals, and education initiatives. Throu...

www.patreon.com/artistdecoded Cliqua is a directing duo (Pasqual Gutierrez and RJ Sanchez) born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. They have directed music videos for J Balvin, Rosalia, Bad Bunny, and others. In the span of a year, the duo has amassed over 700 million Youtube plays. They have also worked with brands like Adidas, Nike, Amazon, and Tecate. Currently Cliqua is continuing to shoot music v...