Portraits of the Artists Courier, Coe College, Cedar Rapids, IA, Fall 2001. P. 15
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In 1992, Fujiko Isomura '95 came to Coe College from Tokyo to study art. Her American experience was fortuitous jump-start of a unique from of cross-culrutal pop art. Six years after graduation, she is a recognized and renowned pop artist in the U.S., known for imaginative works that include the Marlboro Man in a field with opium-smoking women.
It was at Coe that she gained a different perspective. She realized that traditional Japanese art was "cool." This evolved into Isomura's cross-cultural art, images that blend American with Japanese.
The artist creates images of Betty Boop cozying up to a traditional Japanese woman and Norman Rockwell's famous Thanksgiving couple serving to the Simpsons and popular Japanese cartoon children. Her images sell for $500 to $1,000 and are gaining increasing interest from critics, curators and buyers.
"Growing up in Tokyo, Japan, seeing myself as a unique woman was not necessary because blending in with others gains security within the society. Therefore, when I came to America, I realized the existence of 'myself' more clearly," Isomura explained.
Inspiration comes by scanning ads in magazines and pictures in books. She scans the images into her computer, reworks and manipulates them, then has the image printed out at a commercial studio, ink-jetted into watercolor paper.
Back in her Madison, Wis., studio, she modifies the image with gold, silver,and copper leaf, the traditional Japanese techniques. She also uses India ink, dyes, graphite, colored pencils, watercolor and acrylic paints.
"My art is having a conversation between Japanese and American cultures," she told the Madison Capital Times, in a preview article of her January show at the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.
To learn more about Isomura, and to see her works, visit http://members.home.net/fujiko3.
