(Editor's note: This story originally ran in December 2006. We're re-running it because we love the pictures so much!)

Yuko Shimizu needs little introduction from us. Take a look at the picture above, and you'll see that her work can very much speak for itself. We found Yuko's illustrations through a friend and ever since then, we can't leave her alone.

Her drawings have appeared in many countries and even more publications, including Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, GQ and Interview Magazine, among many others. And now we proudly present her work in Pine.

Check out her Web site here, and her portfolio here. And you should read the interview. It's pretty damn interesting.

Pine Magazine: Could you tell us a little about where you are from, where you are now, and how you became a professional illustrator?

Yuko Shimizu: I was born in Tokyo, Japan. My family moved to New York because of my father’s business for 4 years between when I was 12-15. Then I went back to Japan again, got my bachelor’s degree in business and marketing, worked in PR in corporate for 11 years.

I have been drawing ever since I can remember. It was just there was no one in my family who was in art, and they wanted me to pursue something more practical. Advertising and marketing is obviously the most creative of practical business field, so that is why I chose to major.

My job at corporate doing PR, I cannot say it was boring. It was interesting enough. I did my best for 11 years. But I just wanted to be drawing and I rather make my own decisions than having bosses and coworkers. It was clear the corporate was not for me.

Also, I was always considered “different” in Japan because of my four-year experience in New York, and Japan is a homogeneous country where it is hard to accept someone different. I wanted to go back to New York, because I have always felt that was my “home." Japan was not it.

It took me 11 years of corporate life to finally make decision of coming back to New York and pursue art.

I came back as an international student, and four years later I got my Master’s degree in Illustration as Visual Essay program at School of Visual Arts in New York, and I have been working as an artist since then.

It is funny, how everything you experienced in past comes back to you and help you in a weird way. My experience studying Advertising and Marketing, and my 11 years in corporate doing PR have helped me so much running my small business of illustration and other art.

PM: What is your most common medium? What is your usual process for developing an idea you then create?

YS: I use India ink to draw on watercolor paper with Japanese calligraphy brushes. Most of my coloring is done on Adobe Photoshop.

There are so many different processes to develop ideas... When it is a job, read article many times, underline, summarize, take the keywords out and start visualizing them by drawing thumbnails, and start tightening up after.

For my personal work, I just jot down ideas in my sketchbook as ideas come to my head. Sometimes I don’t draw in my sketchbook for weeks, sometimes I draw every day. It depends.

PM: What are some of your more prominent influences?

YS: I often say my influence comes from everything I have ever experienced in my life, good or bad, which is true. Every artist is different because we all have different histories and personalities, and I love that fact.

In terms of more specific and visual influences, although I mainly do illustration, but most of my influences come from outside of current illustration.  Probably people can tell I have strong influences from Japanese Edo period woodcut prints. Hokusai is the top one, since I saw his retrospective in Tokyo when I was a high school student. It was like being hit by a lightning. Also, Utamaro, Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi are my favorites. But I always go back to Hokusai. He has the best sense of composition.

Also, Russian Avant-Garde design movement, especially Alexander Rodchenko and Stemberg Brothers. I have to say I get inspired a lot by early European design movement, color schemes and compositions.

Matthew Barney and Anthony Goicolea are my favorite contemporary fine artists.  Also music by Bjork. I love and get inspired by anything and anyone who is “the original."

PM: You work carries some overtly sexual themes. Is this something that has always been a part of your style, or has it developed more in recent years?

YS: Actually, I don’t do much of sexual themes anymore. It is because I moved back to the US and realized how sex obsessed Americans are, and I thought that was really really funny. And also encountering Asian and Japanese fetishes; totally a new concept for me. So I had to get them out of my system by drawing them.

Also, when I did the alphabet book project, it was part of my graduate mini-thesis, I was very weak in terms of conceptual skill and for me to become a professional illustrator, and I had to work on it to get better. I started picking words that doesn’t make much sense together and started building images from those sets of words to work on my conceptual skills. The reason why it is about sex was because it is easier to make sexual images funnier than other concepts. It was a great exercise. I think I can pay my bills doing illustration because of the skill I obtained from that alphabet-long exercise.

Actually, my sex images are not actually about sex. Look close, no one in my picture is ever actually having sex or no X-rated contents are in any of my images.

It is actually about making people think of sex, but it is all in the viewer’s head! Concept is about tricking people. He he.

PM: How do you feel living in New York affect your style?

YS: I don’t know if it affect my style, but since I have lived here so long twice in my life, New York is part of myself and you cannot get it out of me. Obviously it shows in my work. Just like you cannot take Japanese background away from me and it shows up in my work. But it is more of a natural thing, and I don’t notice it on daily basis.

I worked with a company in Seattle recently, and I had to draw people on a bus commuting. No specific city. And they looked at my work and said, “people look very New Yorker." So I guess it shows.

Also, in terms of my freelance work, being in New York affects a lot. I work mostly with magazines and newspapers, and most of them are located in New York. It makes it easier to communicate with them. I can walk to New York Times or Conde Nast Publishing offices in less than five minutes, say hi to people I work with, go to meetings, etc.

PM: Is there anything I haven't asked yet that's important to know?

YS: Hmmmm, probably the fact that I hate Japan, and I left there in 1999, more than seven years ago and never once went back, and I just became a Permanent Resident of the US, maybe.

At first I hated people see “Japan” in my work, and struggled to change my work to not look Japanese. After a long period of unsuccessful attempt, I just decided to embrace the fact that I am a Japanese, and I cannot get my background out of my work. Then I started doing series of work that has to do with strong Asian/Japanese women theme, and after that everything started to feel easier...