Muralist Katie Yamasaki On Giving Girls A Voice Through Art
By Clarence A. Haynes
Katie Yamasaki, a New York-based muralist and children’s book illustrator, is at the helm of a number of community-based, large-scale murals with teenage girls. One of those projects, Voices Her’d, creates a place for teenage girls to come together, choose an issue affecting their community, and express their ideas through public art. In their murals, the girls address serious issues such as women in the military, the exploitation of inner city youth by military recruiters, women and immigration, and homelessness and health. Yamasaki has also created art projects with children and youth in Cuba, Mexico, Spain, Japan, Argentina, and Namibia.
Her work, she says, is about providing “a visual platform where different communities can have a public voice.” She tells us what she’s learned from the girls of Voices Her’d, her experience working with children in Cuba, and her just-released children’s book Fish for Jimmy.
Q: Tell us about your experiences running the Voices Her’d program?
A: I got on board in 2004, fresh out of graduate school, never having painted anything outdoors. Originally Groundswell, which runs Voices Her’d, wanted me to be the assistant on the project, but they couldn’t find a lead artist, so I became the lead artist. I was totally inexperienced and unprepared, but it ended being a really powerful, transformative experience.
It’s kind of scary, but you’re in charge of all of these girls, and the whole point is for them to open up. So it can’t be about you. You can’t get stuck in your own insecurities about creating on that scale, it’s about how you can get the girls to open up and communicate.
After a summer full of scaffolding nightmares and anxieties, the scaffolding came down and I could actually take a look at what we did. It was overwhelmingly big and overwhelming in general. But at the dedication, the girls spoke about how transformative it was to be the creators of visual media about themselves. That opportunity very rarely happens for a young, disenfranchised woman of color. The Voices Her’d project was a constant reminder about what really matters in art and how important it is to provide these platforms for dialogue and expression.
