USUGROW

(Japan)

Usugrow began his own artistic activity by creating flyers in underground punk and hard core music scene in early 90's. Since then, he has been involved in various album cover designs for bands and musicians regardless of genre, art directions and merchandises, and also collaborating with lots of skateboarding brands and fashion brands.

Usugrow expanded the range of his activity and done several solo exhibition at art galleries in Japan and overseas since 2005, and published his first monograph. In addition to his solo exhibition, he has been curating the group exhibition and book projects with Japanese artists since 2009.

He currently works on mainly illustration, painting and calligraphy as well as live painting, collaboration project with other artists and three-dimensional artwork.

Watch this video:

IAN JOHNSON

(1979, Syracuse, NY, US)

Ian Johnson lives and works in San Francisco, CA. He creates portraits predominately of jazz musicians of the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. Johnson investigates the space between the spontaneous nature of jazz music and the physical structure of the human form.  

Johnson is also the art director of San Francisco’s Western Edition Skateboards, which allows him to explore the fundamental nature of his portraits as both a cultural and commercial product.

Watch this video by Ando Nesia: