Paper Planes from Yuri Shimojo

These days everyone’s got a blog, but the problem with blogs is they’re not very colorful. Sure, you can add fancy flash animation, brightly-hued jpegs from the latest digicam, or kinetically expressive .mov files, but the tactility disappears; web journals simply don’t compare to a beautifully illustrated, handwritten notebook.

No one understands this better than Yuri Shimojo. The 41-year-old artist, illustrator, author, and Barnstormer lives life to the fullest; and, luckily for us, she documents it in physical journals that are nothing short of brilliant. Whether she’s in Brooklyn, Tokyo, or Maui, Shimojo succinctly captures the essence of unusual creatures living next to fantastic people in faraway places.

She has a gift for boiling her experiences down to what’s immediate and personal, and the subjects are always unpredictable: vacation tan lines, alcoholics, British people with big noses, and dolphins all make appearances in her pages, rendered with a disarming combination of accurate detail and childlike simplicity. 

Yuri shared a little of her story with Theme, and graciously let us put some of her pages in our pages.

Photo by Gion

Theme: Did you travel a lot while growing up?
Yeah. I grew up in an unusual family with an unconventional upbringing, which I wrote about in my autobiography, ten years ago last April. [Ed., It’s recently been republished.] I wrote it because I had to [record] something about my experience—everyone in my family passed away before I turned thirty. Some from sickness, some from accidents. When my family passed away, I lost my home—my family was my home. So I guess since then, I consider my home to be inside of me, and I’ve been traveling [since then].

For me, traveling is not just [about geography]. I consider my life as a kind of a journey since birth. Last summer, after ten years, I got kicked out of my apartment on Bedford Ave., so right now I’m actually homeless. I’m finally moving to the jungle in Hawai’i, so it’s like moving from one jungle to another. 

His holiness the Dalai Lama is coming to Maui! The last time I was in Maui, I was invited to lunch by a lama who was building a temple in Maui. He grew up with the Dalai Lama, so when he comes, I get to meet him. Actually, I’ll be one of 500 people, so it’s not a one-on-one.

It sounds like you’re a very spiritual person. Are you religious?
Well, all my family is “on the other side,” so it’s a natural way of communication for me. [It’s] not a religion, but I’ve always been very sensitive to things you cannot see.Do you ever feel spirits or anything like that? Yeah, since I was born! Everyday! So how did you start doing art?In elementary school, every kid had to do a picture journal every day. The great thing was that, at the end, they bound all the journals for each kid. So I still have all my old journals.

Your commercial art and the stuff you show in galleries, is it different from your travel journals?
I show my work at galleries and have published some books and CD covers, [in addition to] commercial work. But my journal work has always been my favorite because I always want everything I do—even my fine art and illustrations—to come from my life. I put some kind of story [in my work]. Journals [have always been a] very natural project, ever since I started to write.

When did you start to write?
Ten years ago, I started writing for this free paper in Japan; it was a column about my daily life. Around that time, I went through my family deaths, and somehow people really liked it, and I won an award. This publisher saw my column and wanted to publish essays about my life as an artist—at the time, I was working as an illustrator and I was on TV in Japan.

Wait, you were on a TV show?
Yeah, it was legendary! It was a cult TV show called “Bum TV,” [a public-access-like show similar to] Wayne’s World. It was broadcasted all over Japan.

Do you ever go back and read your old journals?
Yeah, sometimes. When I go back to read my journals, I can learn about myself. When I journal, my [daydreams and nightmares] become real.

Why do you travel so much?
I think I like to confirm the oneness. When I travel, I encounter many places, people, or cultures that are supposed to be very faraway and exotic, but sometimes they remind me of my childhood or my own background. Those experiences make me very happy and confirm [for] me that we all come from one place.

When you’re traveling, do you record on the spot?
It all depends. I have a sketchbook fetish. I love sketchbooks! When I travel, especially to places like India or the Amazon or Africa or China, I love to go to the local stationery stores. I love school notebooks that have the special thin paper that makes sounds if you put your lips to them and blow. Sketchbooks or notebooks inspire me to write.

When I travel I like to pick things up, like stuff from the street or even garbage. I like to collage those things. I love chopsticks covers, like with a funny panda bear or something; those are slightly different for all countries. It’s the little things, like candy wrappers.

You write about such fantastic people in your journals.
Yeah, I feel so lucky. I just meet incredible people all over the world.

So these are real people?
Yes, real people.

Do you ever make people up?
No. Everybody is super-duper real.

How do you meet these people?
I’m shy, so I don’t really introduce myself, but they just come sit down next to me and start to [talk]. When people who travel with me see my journals later, they always say I depict things and people well. I really like to capture the atmosphere or essence around that person or thing. I don’t draw or write from photographs; I really want to follow my memory. It’s a spontaneous, rough feeling.

What’s your most important travel journal?
I think my cross-country trip in ’97 was very important because it [turned] me into a journal person. I also had a one-month Brazil trip; I had more experience [by then], so the artwork itself in the Brazil journal was tighter and more solid. I found my voice and [understood how to] write journals.

Have you seen other people’s journals?
When I saw Peter Beard’s journals I flipped out. He lived in Kenya for a long time, and he collages with masks and snakes and stuff, so he has a huge sketchbook, but he can’t physically close them. They’re very inspiring.

Who was the most memorable person you met during your travels?
This one woman in China. When I was in China I wanted to [see for myself whether] everybody really meets each other in the park before dawn [to exercise]. I went into the park, and they really do! Crazy! And [there was this] one lady, I think she was doing some tai chi, she was bumping herself into a tree for an hour. Of course I couldn’t watch her the whole time, but when I came back after an hour she was still bumping herself.

How do you afford to travel so much?
Oh…because I am a punk-rock princess.

Did you win the lottery?
Yes, I think I won the lottery of life.

Lastly, why do you journal?
Journaling is so important for me because it’s not only a profound therapeutic meditation, it also helps me on my self-cultivating journey. Even recording my daydreaming or scribbling down blah blah monkey mind thoughts, if I record my own point of view for the particular event with my own voice, it becomes my own reality.

Each person’s reality is their own mind’s creation. Nothing is real, but everything is real. If my journal inspires someone to “become themselves,” that is so encouraging for me to [continue to] share my journals with others.