Yoko Kataoka

Yoko has loved na­ture and draw­ing since her child­hood and as time moved on, this pas­sion brought her to live in a small vil­lage near Besalú. The jour­ney began when she left her na­tive Tokyo at the age of 18 and headed to Ok­i­nawa where, be­sides en­joy­ing the trop­i­cal weather, she stud­ied a tra­di­tional print­ing tech­nique called Bin­gata which fas­ci­nated and keep prac­tic­ing since then, al­ready more than half of her life.

1. Nina: naughty and sweet kitty that is al­ways close to me.

2. Prod­ucts from gar­den: fresh eggs, fruit jams, veg­eta­bles, herbs, wooden but­tons… they make me ex­tremely happy and fill me up with good en­ergy.

3. Print­ing tools: cut­ter, nat­ural pig­ment colours, brushes, mor­tar and pes­tle. Most of my work is using Japan­ese tra­di­tional print­ing tech­nique that uses nat­ural ma­te­ri­als and has warmth and rich­ness of hand­crafts. Al­though it takes time each process, I love doing it.

4. Or­ganic soy­beans: I use them for fix­ing colours on fab­rics, and also for mak­ing home­made miso (fer­mented soy­beans paste) every win­ter. Soy­beans are trans­lated lit­er­ary as “great beans” in Japan­ese and maybe it is some­thing that I as a Japan­ese can't live with­out.

5. Diary: I keep writ­ing my thoughts and daily hap­pen­ings frankly and in­for­mally since 12 years old, it helps me to view my­self ob­jec­tively. Now I have a sec­ond diary that records only about gar­den­ing.

6. Sten­cil prints: re­cently I started with my orig­i­nal pat­terns. Sten­cil is a very sim­ple print­ing process and I do a work­shop aimed to every­body, from kids to grand­par­ents.

7. Sketch books, pen­cils and wa­ter­colours: they are my play­ground and play­things in every­where and at any­time. It is the start­ing point of my work­ing process.

8. Art work: printed by Brian McKen­zie I bought it for my­self in Lon­don and it en­cour­ages me every­day. It is great to own your favourite art work, they are alive and soul­ful, very dif­fer­ent from just hav­ing a photo or a post­card of it.

9. My first story book: “El vi­atge a la Lluna” (Jour­ney to the Moon) 2011.

10. Cal­en­dar 2015: my lat­est work for this brand-new year. It has very local and sea­sonal il­lus­tra­tions on each month. I am get­ting more sen­si­tive to the cycle of na­ture since I live in rural areas and I would like to share it through this cal­en­dar.

http://​www.​yokokataoka.​net