Craig Nagasawa: A Serious Adventure

Fragments from J-Town – an Unfinished Animated Immigration Epic

A Public Open Studio via Zoom
With Special Kaiju Guest (TBA)

Tuesday, July 15, 2025
6:00–7:00 PM (Pacific Time)

For Zoom link, please contact Craig Nagasawa

Join artist Craig Nagasawa for A Serious Adventure, an open studio and story hour featuring in-process hand-drawn animations, 3D-rendered sequences, video, and paintings.

Supported by a Berkeley Civic Arts grant, Nagasawa’s new work J-Town explores animation and time-based media, and excavates his family’s story and its place in Japanese-American history and the atomic age. His grandfather crossed the Pacific from Japan to Hawai‘i and then San Francisco. His parents ran a fish market in Japantown, Salt Lake City, a target of cultural erasure. And Nagasawa himself has been a competitive skier, a painter specializing in hand-ground mineral pigments, and a long time art teacher.

Featuring in-process hand-drawn animation and computer generated sequences, as well as videotaped performances, paintings, and soundscapes, this animated short invites audiences into Nagasawa’s creative process, including a 3D rendering of his family’s fish market. He uses visual storytelling to reach toward memories scattered across generations, times, and places that no longer exist – both a history of immigration and marginalization and a recounting of his yearning for freedom and adventure.

This project is supported in part by a Berkeley Civic Arts Grant.

For Zoom link, please contact Craig Nagasawa