In 2016, my family moved from New York to Seattle. As we entered Seattle, I stopped at the Space Needle and snapped a photo from a 7-11 parking lot on Denny Way. Days later, I drew the photo on my iPad and Seattle Drawn was born. I briefly managed an Instagram account by the same name, the profile reading “Artist drawn to Seattle draws Seattle”. Over the next six years, I documented the Emerald City with fresh eyes. Here is a collection of those drawings. All drawings were rendered using an iPad with Procreate or Tayasui Sketches apps. I used my left index finger as a stylus. On rare occasions, I used an Apple Pencil.
Triggers is a collection of meditations on memory and identity in a digital age. I use various media -digital and analog-to create a meaningful and cohesive document for an elusive future. Grammarly, an AI-powered app, edited text. Slidebook provided the layout.
Reviewed in The Jewish Book Council and Asian Jewish Life
“This small but powerful book tells a story in deeply emotional terms, yet manages to follow a straightforward path that points directly at Judaic love, and by doing so not only reflects our own, but at the same time broadens and strengthens it. Akira wrote the words and his wife, Ellie, designed the pages, culminating in a book that is a pleasure to hold, read, look at, and absorb. Complete with a timeline that traces the roots of Akira’s Judaism back to his Jewish great-grandfather and down to his baby son, it takes the reader on a journey from the Russian pogroms of 1911 to the birth of Boaz Jules Ohiso in New York City in 2006. Akira himself was born in 1970, the child of interracial parents, his mother an Irish-Russian Jew, his father a Japanese immigrant. He converted to Judaism in 2003, a year before his marriage to a Jewish woman, finding himself at a spiritual crossroads that offered to both enhance and reinforce his beliefs, offering him the kind of Judaic nourishment he now lovingly passes on to his son. This book is the story of that journey.”
By Linda F. Burghardt – September 9, 2011, Jewish Book Council