Eric Nakamura is a Japanese American magazine publisher, gallerist, and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Giant Robot, owner of the Giant Robot store and GR2 Gallery, and curator of the Giant Robot Biennales and other museum exhibitions. [1]
Publisher Nakamura grew up in the Sawtelle, Los Angeles area. He attended Palisades High School and later Santa Monica College, where he'd work with the Palisadian-Post as their only photographer.
Nakamura attended UCLA, graduating in 1993 with a degree in East Asian Studies. [2]
After graduation, Nakamura worked at VideoGames & Computer Entertainment shortly before starting Giant Robot. [3]
In 1994, he founded Giant Robot, which began as a self-published magazine and grew into a widely circulated bi-monthly magazine about Asian pop culture. [1] In 2001, he opened the first Giant Robot store in Los Angeles. [2] The magazine ceased publication in February 2011, but Nakamura continued publication through the curation of several Giant Robot Biennales at the Japanese American National Museum [4] and the SuperAwesome: Art and Giant Robot exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California Art. [5]
Nakamura opened Asian fusion restaurant gr/eats [6] in 2005. [7] [8] [9] It had an almost seven year run [10] in Sawtelle, Los Angeles, right by their physical Giant Robot store. [7] [8]
Sawtelle is a district in the Westside of the city of Los Angeles, California, partially within the West Los Angeles subregion. It was established in 1899 and named after a manager of the Pacific Land Company who was initially responsible for its development and promotion.
Giant Robot was a bimonthly magazine of Asian and Asian-American popular culture founded in Southern California in 1994. It was one of the earliest American publications to feature prominent Asian film stars such as Chow Yun-fat and Jet Li, as well as Asian musicians from indie and punk rock bands. Its coverage later expanded into art, design, Asian-American issues, travel, and much more.
Mariko Mori is a Japanese multidisciplinary artist. She is known for her photographs and videos of her hybridized future self, often presented in various guises and featuring traditional Japanese motifs. Her work often explores themes of technology, spirituality and transcendence.
The Japanese American National Museum is located in Los Angeles, California, and dedicated to preserving the history and culture of Japanese Americans. Founded in 1992, it is located in the Little Tokyo area near downtown. The museum is an affiliate within the Smithsonian Affiliations program.
Meiling Melançon, also known as Mei Melançon, is an American actress, screenwriter and former fashion model. She has appeared in major feature films as well as indie productions, television shows, and more than one hundred commercials as a model and actress. As of 2014 she is becoming known for work behind the camera in roles such as screenwriter and producer.
Sawtelle Boulevard is a north/south street in the Westside region of the city of Los Angeles, California. For most of its length, it parallels the San Diego Freeway, one block to the east.
David Choe is an American artist, musician, and former journalist and podcast host from Los Angeles. Choe's work appears in a wide variety of urban culture and entertainment contexts. He has illustrated and written for magazines including Hustler, Ray Gun and Vice. He has an ongoing relationship with the Asian pop culture store-cum-magazine Giant Robot. He once hung his work in a Double Rainbow ice cream shop located on Melrose Avenue. His figurative paintings, which explore themes of desire, degradation, and exaltation, are characterized by a raw, frenetic method that he has termed "dirty style."
Mark Bradford is an American visual artist. Born in Los Angeles, Bradford studied at the California Institute of the Arts. Recognized for his collaged painting works, which have been shown internationally, his practice also encompasses video, print, and installation. Bradford was the U.S. representative for the 2017 Venice Biennale. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Manuel Ocampo is a Filipino artist. His work fuses sacred Baroque religious iconography with secular political narrative. His works draw upon a wide range of art historical references, contain cartoonish elements, and draw inspiration from punk subculture.
Do Ho Suh is a Korean sculptor and installation artist. He also works across various media, including paintings and film which explore the concept of space and home. His work is particularly well known in relation to anti-monumentalism. His works convey his life experiences, including the homes he has lived in and the diversity of the people he has met.
Miyako Ishiuchi, is a Japanese photographer.
Chiura Obata was a well-known Japanese-American artist and popular art teacher. A self-described "roughneck", Obata went to the United States in 1903, at age 17. After initially working as an illustrator and commercial decorator, he had a successful career as a painter, following a 1927 summer spent in the Sierra Nevada, and was a faculty member in the Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1932 to 1954, interrupted by World War II, when he spent a year in an internment camp. He nevertheless emerged as a leading figure in the Northern California art scene and as an influential educator, teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, for nearly twenty years and acting as founding director of the art school at the Topaz internment camp. After his retirement, he continued to paint and to lead group tours to Japan to see gardens and art.
Hannah Stouffer is an American artist, illustrator and art director living and working in Los Angeles, California. She became known through her art exhibitions, as well as for her contributions to the making of individual and collective art installations and murals worldwide. As a book author, her curatorial review of contemporary ceramics and its methods The New Age of Ceramics has received distinct attention in specialized art sources. Stouffer also acted as curator and designer of illuminated works Lust for Light, printed and distributed by Gingko Press.
There is a Japanese American and a Japanese national population in Los Angeles and Greater Los Angeles. Japanese people began arriving in the United States in the late 1800s and have settled in places like Hawaii, Alaska, and California. Los Angeles has become a hub for people of Japanese descent for generations in areas like Little Tokyo and Boyle Heights. As of 2017, Los Angeles has a Japanese and Japanese American population of around 110,000 people.
Shizu Saldamando, is an American visual artist. Her work merges painting and collage in portraits that often deal with social constructs of identity and subcultures. She has worked in the genre of arte paño, a type of prison art involving portraits of family members and friends drawn in ball-point pen on napkins or handkerchiefs. Saldamando also works in video, installation and performance art.
Firoz Mahmud is a Bangladeshi visual artist based in Japan. He was the first Bangladeshi fellow artist in research at Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. Mahmud's work has been exhibited at the following biennales: Sharjah Biennale, the first Bangkok Art Biennale], at the Dhaka Art Summit, Setouchi Triennale (BDP), the first Aichi Triennial], the Congo Biennale, the first Lahore Biennale], the Cairo Biennale, the Echigo-Tsumari Triennial], and the Asian Biennale.
Yumi Sakugawa is a comic artist based in California. Her work has been published online, in feminist magazines and in book form. Sakugawa also edits a blog about wellness. She was nominated for an Ignatz Award in 2014 for her mini comic, Never Forgets.
Elena Manferdini is an Italian architect based in Venice, California, where she is the principal and owner of Atelier Manferdini. She is the Graduate Programs Chair at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). She has over fifteen years of professional experience that span across architecture, art, design, and education.
Anthony Hernandez is an American photographer who divides his time between Los Angeles, his birthplace, and Idaho. His photography has ranged from street photography to images of the built environment and other remains of civilization, particularly those discarded or abandoned elements that serve as evidence of human presence. He has spent most of his career photographing in Los Angeles and environs. "It is L.A.'s combination of beauty and brutality that has always intrigued Hernandez." La Biennale di Venezia said of Hernandez, "For the past three decades a prevalent question has troubled the photographer: how to picture the contemporary ruins of the city and the harsh impact of urban life on its less advantaged citizens?" His wife is the novelist Judith Freeman.
Drago is an independent international publishing house of contemporary art based in Rome, Italy. The company specialises in street and urban art and has published the works of street photographers, street artists and graffiti writers from around the world. It is frequently involved in exhibitions of contemporary art and acts as the official publisher for various galleries, museums and institutions.