It's here!

I finally got the figure by mail!yeeey~  so cute! It didn't come with a string so I tied a thread.  looks good.

Mustache Sisters News! Amazing Salvaor Dali at High Museum

Nina and I, Mustache Sisters have a great news today!We are invited to the event at High Museum in Atlanta Conjunction with their new Salvador Dali Exhibit.  We will be there for their Halloween Family Event and doing our Work Shop in our new Salvador Dali Mustache!!! I'm going to upload some work in progress photos as this project goes forward :-D

Here is our new Muse, Salvador Dali with his beautiful mustache!

His Funny sense of Humor and theatrical photos, I like these more than his painting, I'm sure if he is here he will appreciate our mustache project!

now I'm getting really excited about our new project!

KidRobot Dunny 2010 Party --- New York

Last Thursday I went to the Dunny 2010 trading party at KidRobot SOHO Store in NY.  It was a whole new experience for me!

My Dunny was 1/400, really hard to get, so I was a bit worry if anyone will get them... then BoooM! first boy through the door got it!!! I was so happy,  it was a first time for me too to see my new Toy!

There were 2 artists Travis Cain and Damarak the Destroyer were also there for signing, Travis did a balloon head Dunny and Damarak did a transparent Dunny, both are super cool, it's really good to see other designers :-D

We were sitting behind a table and signing.  And also drawing on some blank figures people brought. Everybody were so nice, and it was nice to talk to them and hear what people thought about the designs and etc.

In one night there were 3 people (only...) pulled out my super rare Dunny from blind boxes.  2 boys and one woman.  They seemed excited and really like the design which made me happy :-D

Party was great!  And the people working at the store were super nice,too.  Thank you KidRobot!  Thank you my friends for coming out to support me, and all the Dunny lovers that I met...so nice to meet you!

(extra extra) My friend sent me this photo from another party in West Coast. photo of a girl who've got my Toy.  she looks so happy and this photo really made my day!

Collaboration with Noted ---thaumatrope by contemporary designers

I had a great opportunity to design a thaumatrope with the paper toy company Noted.I remember I had one when I was a kid.

After brainstorming, I did small sketches to share my ideas with an art director from Noted.

We decided to go with the "Bear eating Girl" so I worked on a final version... First I drew them in a white back ground using brush and sumi ink, then guache to color. Then the company realized that thaumatrope works best in lightly colored background.  (i didn't know either!) So I colored the back ground cream yellow by computer.

and they just sent me the final product!  it's really nicely packaged and super cute!

you can visit Noted here: http://www.notedco.com/spin.html

Paper-mache Day

Today we had a Paper-mache day, it was a first Craft day of this summer!

Thank you Ladies! and Thank you Eun-ha and Karl for hosting! I had such a great time, till next time~

Here is the list of the participant artists for this time: Rachel Cole www.rachaelcole.net/ Emily Gearhart www.emilygearhart.com Soojin Chun Buzelli (art director at) www.plansponsordigital.com/plansponsor/plansponsor201007#pg1 Nora Kurg www.nora-krug.com Eun-ha Paek www.eun-ha.com Karl Ackermann www.milkyelephant.com

Monterey CA --- extra extra

So we had a one whole day to enjoy the area after the opening, it was a sunny and a perfect day!Monterey has an amazing Aquarium, we've been waiting to visit and finally our dream came true. Also seems like People in CA has such a great car!

And the natures in CA is incredible! Orange, Yellow, purple and blue it was such a teat for my eyes :-)

PaoPao Nest --- opening!

It's all ready!  it's the opening night~Back in NY, our friend Kimiko made us dresses which goes with our Nest!  aren't they amazing?!

we've got picked up Gallery director Zeeek by his super cute bug!

Opening was great!  so many nice people, we had so much fun!

Thank you Alternative Cafe Gallery to host us our PaoPao Show!  We had a great time!  and we will be back next year!

PaoPao arrive to Monterey, CA --- installing day

Finally it's alllll done!  (you can see work in progress in my blog from June 30th)We made the nest, paintings, and sculptures! We are all packed up and ready to go to Monterey!

Arriving at the Gallery, we start installing.

Now Time to install our PaoPao Nest!

Now we are done installing~

Collaboration with "Seen" a new lifestyle Web site

New website "Seen" conjunction with CBCDF (Comic Book Legal Defense Found) I designed a sneaker!it was super fun, I love drawing on non flat surfaces.  This is going to be Auction it off at San Diego Comic-Con this year.

And here is my dear friend Pierre modeling for me + Alexis as a modeling coach :-) Thank you Pierre et Alexis!

here is the post at New York Times Magazine Blog: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/aya-kakeda/

Collaboration with Rooms Magazine

I got an e-mail from Eva from new art magazine call "rooms" in England.And had a proposal to do a cover for their first issue! I was very excited. Since the magazine was called "rooms" I wanted to draw something that represent the idea of nesting. Since I moved around a lot in my life time, nesting for me means moving with Objects and Memories and making a comfortable atmosphere. So I drew this image.  A Girl carring her objects/memories on her antler and walking in the forest.

And I received the final magazine the other day, it looks great!  thank you Eve!

Link to the Rooms Magazine --->  http://www.roomsmagazine.com/

PaoPao paintings! collaborationg with a mysterious Japanese Print maker

So here we are working towards the PaoPao Nest Show at Alternative Gallery in Monterey, CA. We also decided to do a collaborative paintings.  We have painted together back in 2003 and it was fun, but this time it was much much more fun because I think we both got better at painting and now we know each other much more!  so it was easier to collaborate and share our vision together!

We found 3 beautiful Japanese Prints near my house at the thrift store and start drawing on top of it. So I guess it's a collaboration with 3 people. with one mysterious Japanese Print maker :-) Can you tell who did what???

Making of the PaoPao Nest

Me and Fumiha started to collaborate as a "PaoPao,"  back in 2003.  And this year we had a show invitation from Alternative Cafe Gallery in Monterey California.  So we started to do a collaboration! For this show we wanted to make a nice  " PaoPao Nest", so we started our first nest idea.

First idea was to make kind of a  Igloo type of Onion shaped nest  in plastic.... but after sawing all together and try it inside, we realized that it was too hot for a summer, so we decided to make an open nest!

Super Hot summer days and nights, me and fumiha made friends with felts and yarn. hehehe Finally it started to take a shape!

Aya + Inspire!

Helene Rossi from Inspire! sent me a message about her project. The project Inspire! ---> She will send me a blind sample of a perfume then I illustrate from the inspiration from the scent. Such an interesting project, I of course said "YES! count me in!"

So few weeks later....I received the mysterious vials...

It smelled like sweet, rose, botanical and a bit of of citrus??? My nose investigated the scent and my brain was trying hard to come up with an image! I imagined a girl with a orange head-dress sleeping in a Polynesian Island at night, Rose in a cage...

And I sent it over to Helene, she sent me the answer, the name of the mystery perfume!

Voila!!!  Rose Noir! so I think my imagination wasn't too far from the scent!  :-D

You can see Helene's Inspire! project + what the other artists came up with different mysterious scents: http://www.inspire-blog.com/

Mustache Sisters going to Philly!

Me and Nina, the mustache sisters were invited to an event at Philadelphia Museum of Art for their Italian Opera night!So we gave an Italian opera mustache musk workshop!

AND most Importantly we made a NEW summer version mustache for this event, it's gray and have a Mediterranean motifs on the back + new gold sparkly pants!  hehe

And the people there were wonderful and friendly.  They all had great imaginations and made such a beautiful masks! here are some photos from the craft work shop!

Thank you Philly!!! I really loved the city and people's energy there~

And thank you Angelo and Lisa (+ Doggies) for hosting us! You can see more photos at our website: http://www.mustachesisters.com/philly_museum.html

Mustache Sisters --- making of the Italian Mustache!

Hello!Nina and I are working on our new mustache which is commissioned by Philadelphia Museum of Art. They are having an Italian Opera Night for their after 5 event on June 4th, so they asked us if we can perform and have a work- shop.

Since we leaned about this back in March, we were so excited and we started brain storming!  Italian Italian... so our research began.

We were trying to incorporate some Opera images at first and having a color like dark red, black and dark green some sort of classic colors. But we thought.... hmmm... we want something light and summer.  Then we searched for some more Italian motifs, there we found so many beautiful curvy images and interesting characters.  And the pallet of beautiful light gray, blue, yellow came up in our minds.

So here we started putting together some images!

And can you see the peals?  We wanted to make this one as fancy as possible, after all this is for an Italian Opera Ball! After finishing the back part it's a time to sew and put them together

And here is the photo of us wearing the final version.  it became a nice Mediterranean Mustache~  we love it! plus this time we up-graded rest of our costume, too. Now for this Summer season we have a sparkly gold pants!

So this is how we made this mustache come to life!

Collaboration with KidRobot---Fatale series

KidRobot Launching their new Dunny Series, this series are special, all by Female Artists!!!My good friends Wendi Koonts, Sara Varon, and Tara McPherson are all in this series :-)  this is so exciting!

I love working with KidRobot, they make such a great final product!

This is how I work with them. in the begging I make a sketches and the color information.

And they start sculpting with clay

and then after few adjustments they start making the color sample.

I love seeing the process and excite me every time when they send me a photos of their clay models :-)

YEY Fatale series!  And Sara, Wendi and Tara's Dunnys looks super great!!!

More info you can check here : http://kronikle.kidrobot.com/preview-dunny-fatale-series/

Drawing day

Wishing for a good starts on 2010 me and Rachael coordinated a Draw-a-tron at my house this weekend.Our goal was to draw a 50 drawings each!

Everybody found their favorite spot and start drawing.

We drew from 12-8pm! and The winner who did do all 50 drawings were Marie and Sara! in the end we decided to put up our favorite drawings on the floor and look at them.

I couldn't post every drawings and friends, sorry... But I posted all the people who came to the drawing day below :-) Check out their websites, they are all so amazing!

It was so much fun, thank you for coming~!

Artists and friends who came to the drawing day: Eddie Hemingway : http://www.edwardhemingway.com/ Elena Wen : http://www.elenawen.com/ Eun-ha Paek : http://www.eun-ha.com/ Fumiha Tanaka : http://www.fmtishere.com/ George Broojy : http://www.georgeboorujy.com/ Katie Yamazaki : http://www.katieyamasaki.com/ Kimiko Nakazawa John Leif Parsons : http://www.leifparsons.com/ Lauren Berke : http://www.simkinberke.com/ Marie Tribouilloy Mars Van Grunsven : http://www.europeanmedia.info/us/profileview.php?person=7 Moriah Ray : http://www.framedgirl.com/ Nastasha Nina Frenkel : http://www.ninafrenkel.com/ Peter Hamlen : http://www.hambot.com/ Rachael Cole : http://www.rachaelcole.net/ Sara Varon : http://www.chickenopolis.com/ Wendi Koontz : http://wendikoontz.com/home.html Yunmee Kyong : http://www.yunmee.com/

Mustache Sisters

Mustache Sisters' tea party

This is my favorite collaboration from 2009 with my friend Nina Frenkel. Part of the reason this project happened was because of the recession last year when both of us had lots of time and kind of lost with our artistic vision. This fun and uplifting project really helped me though the slow and frustrated time!

our cute shoes

The Whole Project started from an e-mail we got back in Feb 2009 from Hungarian Culture Center who were hosting a mustache contest.  So we decided to enter the contest! Since we are girls who can't grow mustaches...we decided to make a huge mustache to wear it!

After the contest we did a work shop at Brooklyn Museum as Mustache Sisters, which was so much fun!!!

And For Christmas we made some mustache ornaments for a craft fair which was nice and cozy project.

I hope we do more this year,too! Maybe making a new kind of mustache to wear~

You can see more pictures and info at : http://www.mustachesisters.com Also can get ornaments from : http://www.etsy.com/shop/mustachesisters

and most of all here is my collaborator Nina Frenkel's web site: http://www.ninafrenkel.com/

I always liked Nina's work, so it was great to work with her finally!