Meet Your Maker: Yoshi Nakagawa, Printmaker
Yoshi Nakagawa pulled her first print in 1999 at the University of Puget Sound. Twenty-seven years later, she's still chasing the same feeling: that moment when you peel back the paper and see what the ink left behind.
What happened between then and now is a story that spans three countries, two languages, and more carved blocks than anyone could count.
Tacoma to Japan to Oaxaca and Back
Yoshi was born in Tacoma and raised by Japanese parents in Portland. Her mother collected ukiyo-e woodblock prints by master printmaker Hasui Kawase, and those images stuck with her long before she ever picked up a carving tool.
After college, she moved to Japan for two years. Then eight years in Seattle, sharpening her skills. And then Oaxaca, Mexico, where she spent nine years as a full-time visual artist, immersed in one of the richest printmaking communities in the world.
She came back to Tacoma in 2021 and has been building something here ever since: teaching workshops, developing programs with schools and libraries, exhibiting in galleries, and connecting artists and communities through the slow, deliberate work of putting ink to paper.
The Art of Showing Up and Making Marks
Yoshi's work draws from the natural world and Japanese textile patterns, filtered through everything she absorbed in Mexico and the Pacific Northwest. Her prints feel grounded. Botanical forms, repeating patterns, the kind of detail that rewards a closer look.
Her artist statement puts it simply: "There is great beauty and simplicity in our everyday lives: the respect for working by hand, finding enlightenment in something very repetitive, a childhood memory that resolves the present moment."
That philosophy carries straight into her teaching. She's a believer in learning through doing, and she's not precious about mistakes. In her words, she's "a big fan of hands-on learning from mistakes, imperfection, and failure." Which, honestly, is exactly the energy we want at camp.
The Workshop: Linocut Printmaking
In this workshop, you'll carve your own design into a 4"x6" linoleum block and print it by hand with oil-based ink on washi (Japanese mulberry paper). Yoshi walks you through every step, from transferring your sketch to pulling your first print.
If you want to come prepared, bring a rough 4"x6" sketch of an image you'd like to work with. But it's not required. Yoshi will help you figure it out either way.
You'll leave with original hand-pulled prints and the knowledge to keep printing at home. The technique works on paper, and even on textiles if you want to take it further.
No experience needed. Just a willingness to carve, ink up, and see what happens.
Why This One's Special
Printmaking has this wonderful quality where you do all the careful, focused work up front, and then the reveal happens all at once. You press the paper, you pull it back, and there it is. Yoshi has guided people through that moment for over two decades, everywhere from Tacoma to Japan to Oaxaca to right here on Vashon Island (she's taught at Wild Dreams Farm, Mukai Farm, Vashon Center for the Arts, among others, before).
She knows what she's doing. And she makes it feel like you do too.
Save Your Spot
Mischief & Makers Camp runs August 7 through 9 on Vashon Island. Yoshi's Linocut Printmaking workshop is one of several hands-on sessions over the weekend, alongside chef-prepared meals and the kind of unplugged quiet that's hard to find anywhere else.
Follow Yoshi's work on Instagram at @yoshi.nakagawa36.