Katie Yamasaki, Brooklyn, NY
Katie Yamasaki is an artist living in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Earlham College in Richmond, IN with a BA in Art, and went on to get her MFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Katie designed the beautiful color poster for the Celebrate Urban Birds kits.
Most of my time these days is divided between teaching art to adolescents and making it myself. I work primarily as a muralist, doing large-scale outdoor murals with inner-city teen girls every summer, and smaller inside projects during the colder months. My murals can be found at schools, libraries, courtyards, building walls, churches, and theatres in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Indiana, New Jersey, Detroit, and Cuba. Besides the murals, I have my first solo exhibition coming up in April and am spending day and night in my studio getting ready. I also have several children’s book projects in the works and often take portrait commissions in between long-term projects.
My teaching is really important to me and this is my 6th year working in the public schools. I was thrilled to hear about the Urban Birds project because not only do I use bird imagery a lot in my own work, but have doing a lot of environment and animal-based art projects with my students. In teaching art I have been affected by the natural affinity most children have for animals and the environment. This may seem like an obvious statement, but in the inner city it often feels like ‘nature’ is an abstract concept, which makes environmental conservation seem like a foreign idea, applicable just for people who actually live around ‘nature’. Utilizing kids’ inherent affinity to animal life is a great way to get them to consider the environment and gives them a tangible reason to care for the natural world.
In the final image for the Urban Bird Studies poster, I wanted to show the unique relationship people in the inner city occupy with birds. While we may not have rolling hills and rocky cliffs jutting into spectacular seascapes, the urban landscape has its own magic. It is a world richly textured with unusual architecture, green spaces, and humankind from every corner of every country and culture in the world. You may have to walk a few blocks to find a tree or potted plant, but you will never have to look hard to find people who fascinate in birds and who care about the future of our natural world.
It has been an honor for me to create an image for this group of devoted scientists and the wonderful Urban Bird Studies program.
