Happy International Women’s Day! In honor of the day, I wanted to continue my list of some of my favorite artists, this time entirely focusing on women. I’ve already mentioned quite a few women in part 1 (including Audrey Kawasaki, Handiedan, Ozabu, Sandra Chevrier, and Tiffany Le), but I figured this was one way to celebrate the day. With that being said, I also want to acknowledge that many artists do not like being categorized by their gender, since we typically do not label (often white cis-het) male artists as “male artists.” These are some of my favorite artists regardless of gender (hence the non-gendered title); but I want to honor these women today, a day which celebrates women.
Bahar Bambi
Dubbed “She-King,” Bahar Bambi is a Berlin-based artist with Turkish roots who has been featured in the likes of Vogue. Her mixed cultural heritage is represented in her art, which combines the street art aesthetics of graffiti with traditional middle eastern designs (think of hand-knotted Turkish rugs, as seen in her above work, "I'm a Work-In-Progress Masterpiece"). To this end, basketball frequently figures into her work, ranging form painting basketballs and backboards, to including Air Jordans in her paintings. She recently worked in collaboration with Satou Sabally, Nike, and Air Jordan to create the Satou Sabally Court (pictured below), an actual full basketball court painted in her style.
Kayla Mahaffe
Kayla Mahaffe is an artist based in Chicago. Her works frequently feature realistic portrayals of Black children juxtaposed against pastel pop references and allusions, ranging from Disney to anime, games to cartoons. Imagination is the name of the game here and, indeed, her art has been picked up by Thinkspace Art, devoted as it is to the New Contemporary Art Movement. I first learned of Mahaffe’s work from the League Of Their Own collectors, big as they were on her art. I was fortunate enough to see her work a few times while living in Chicago, though I wish I had been able to see some of the murals she did in South Chi-town.
Little Thunder
Little Thunder is a cartoonist, illustrator, and painter who has a mesmerizing control of her brush (seriously, watch any of her WIP videos). She has garnered an international reputation for her art, perhaps reflected best in her being the cover artist for Shoeisha’s Illustration 2021, their yearly catalog that documents some of the world’s (mostly those in the Asian SNS scene) best illustrators. Music not infrequently plays a part in Little Thunder's work. One of my favorite pieces of hers is entitled “B-A-S-S” and depicts a woman holding an enormous bass (the fish) at a market as if she were holding an electric bass (the instrument). A print of this work is hanging in my kitchen.
reidf
Reid Fagerquist, better known by her handle, @reidf, is an illustrator and cosplayer. I first learned of Reid when she did an art trade with @itsbirdy, probably close to a decade ago, and then eventually met her at an anime convention. We continued running into each other at conventions since we both did the Texas circuit of cons and eventually became friends. Frankly speaking, her art streams during the isolation of pandemic lockdown were part of what got me through it—to the point where both her and the artist below are thanked in my dissertation acknowledgments. Back to her art: Reid has perhaps the best sense of color of any artist I know. In her work, she typically takes cute pop culture creatures (frequently Pokémon, but also Digimon, Spyro, Baby Yoda, etc.) and works them into her rainbow aesthetic with colored pencils (and sometimes pastels). Think, perhaps, a pastel and refined Lisa Frank. Because of how detailed her works are, Reid’s pieces can take dozens (plural) of hours to complete. But the payoff is well worth it, as I’ve not seen any traditional artist able to bring out colors the way she does. (People popping into her Twitch when she was streaming often assumed she was a digital artist!)
Ninomae Ina’nis
Last, but certainly not least, Ninomae Ina’nis (AKA Ina) is a VTuber associated with the Hololive company. She primarily works with digital art, and has created official art for Hololive and Vocaloid (Miku), and sanctioned art for the NieR series…! Her work exists in other places as well… but it’s taboo to talk about VTubers’ lives outside of their lore, so I will refrain. Regardless, it’s fascinating to watch Ina work on stream. She's not only an extremely fast worker, but also a very thorough and detailed one. She also will frequently narrate her thought process, so others can follow along. As with Reid above, Ina’s comfy streams were a godsend during the pandemic.