Canvas Detroit

Katie Yamasaki

270 KATIE YAMASAKI (Photo: Michael Chung) 271 In Detroit, the name Yamasaki is typically uttered in reference to a lone creative force, the late modern architect Minoru Yamasaki. From his offices in Detroit, he emerged as a global synonym for lean yet elegant structures. It was Yamasaki who laid the vision and captivated the world with his design for the World Trade Center. But increasingly, art lovers are following the work of another Yamasaki. Like her grandfather, Katie Yamasaki makes art by transforming buildings, from Detroit to Chiapas, into mesmerizing explorations of shapes and expression. She also shares an affinity for Detroit. “It’s always felt like a place where people are hungry for engagement and expression,” says Yamasaki, who grew up in in the suburbs surrounding Detroit and once worked as a public school teacher in Detroit. “Everybody that I’ve ever worked with in Detroit has struck me with this total commitment to community, a feeling of how can I make it better despite what’s going on around me,” she says. So, whenever organizations in Detroit have asked, Yamasaki has willingly returned with her optimism and one condition. Wherever she chooses to paint, the focus must always be on the community, never the heft of her last name. Detroit is home to three of her large-scale pieces, works she painted essentially as gifts to the Marcus Garvey Academy, the Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance, and the Boggs Educational Center. Each mural bears her distinctive style. They’re sweeping realistic portraits surrounded by dramatic shapes and colors, choices Yamasaki makes only after listening. (It’s a style that Yamasaki also employs in her work as a children’s book illustrator, including her latest book, Fish for Jimmy.) “There are a lot of people and populations that get spoken for all the time. Their voices are treated as if they don’t matter,” says Yamasaki, thirty-six. “Kids get spoken for. Cities like Detroit that are economically poor get spoken for. Murals are a good way for people to speak for themselves and on behalf on their own community.” The similarities end there, though. Katie keeps her eyes focused closer to the ground, on the barren walls of buildings in communities that view art as a way to build dialogue and bridges. With more than forty murals around the world, the reach of her work is as global as her grandfather’s. But few of the cities where she’s made art have made as deep an imprint as Detroit. When she’s not travelling, Yamasaki calls Brooklyn home. Yet even on its streets, the air is filled with chatter about the crowning of Motown as the new cheap “it” town for artists. “I understand the appeal of being in a place where you can afford to make the kind work you want to do, but I also think that a lot of artists, especially young artists just coming up, have this idea that you make it in your art career when you can afford to live off selling your paintings or whatever work you do,” Yamasaki says. Some of the buzz about Detroit—and some of the changes she’s witnessed during visits back—worries Yamasaki. Bring on the positive headlines and the influx of open minds, she says, but don’t race past the unmet needs of the city’s noncreative citizens. “To be an artist, you have to be aware of your context, and not just aware of it in a way that you can benefit from it but aware of it in a way that you’re contributing,” she says. “The blessing that your environment is giving you in terms of affordability and inspiration, you have to give right back.” One day soon she hopes to give life to a project she’s longed to do in Detroit. Imagine, as she does, a “network of faces” spread throughout specific neighborhoods to help agencies and organizations better connect with people in need. “Art can be a really effective tool for bridge building between people who need services, and providers who have the services but can’t find an effective way to get the reach they need,” she says. As proof of this concept, Yamasaki points to a mural project she created to help incarcerated women at New York’s Rikers Island communicate with their children. For the project, Yamasaki drew on her experience as a former public school teacher in Detroit and as an art teacher...