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Yoshitomo Nara N’s YARD

This private facility was born out of Yoshitomo Nara’s desire to set up a place in Japan where his works could be enjoyed in a more casual, personal setting. N’s YARD is a contemporary art space showcasing the work of Yoshitomo Nara and other modern artists. Besides works, the exhibits feature record sleeves and art objects lovingly collected by Nara over many years.

Nara picked the location after being captivated by Nasu’s rich natural environAside from a diverse selection of Nara’s works, paintings, drawings, ment and scenery. and three-dimensional works, the five exhibition rooms contain disFollowing an advance openplays personally curated by Nara, including his collection of records, ing in November 2017, N’s dolls, and pieces by other artists. YARD officially opened in March 2018. The site also features a gift shop selling original items and a café offering light meals, drinks, and desserts made with handpicked ingredients. Outside stands a 5m bronze sculpture, Miss Forest / Thinker. Exhibits are changed once a year during the facility’s winter closure, but new works are also sometimes displayed for limited periods soon after completion. Along with the seasonal beauty of Nasu’s natural environment, this space lets visitors directly experience the world as viewed by Yoshitomo Nara.

STE- VE NAZ- AR

One of the awesome things about working with illustrators is there’s no jumped-up sense of entitlement. The legendary Steve Nazar is one of those dudes. Seems like he lives a pretty chill life, drawing and hanging out in South- ern California, and always seems very humbled by compliments on his work online.

Steve’s work is pretty unique: There’s a real nice balance between ace illustration, gross-out teen stuff, classic surf iconography and outsider, humorous British seaside postcard stuff.

I’m stoked we got to do this interview as I remem- ber my friends cool, older brother, had a T&C Surf ‘Da Boyz’ tee back in the day. I didn’t know who it was by and then, I didn’t

really care too much. I remember wanting to find out more about these guys and wondered what their lives were like. I made stories up for them in my head, which, I suppose, is a high compliment of character design.

Having since looked into it, some of the stories Steve made up for them are much better than the ones I did. The lead image of this post, and you can see it below, show ‘…Da Boyz walking out of a modern art museum, themselves having been transformed into cubist masterpieces’: fucking amazing.

It’s awesome to see Steve’s work today, and how he’s still practising, and still sticking Da Boyz into commercial jobs – they pop up in a bunch of unusual spots. And he’s picking up a bunch of really cool work – such as a line of boards for Deathwish skateboards in recent years.