Meet 2025 Artist in Residence: Yuko Okabe
April 30, 2025
The Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts' Artist in Residence program engages a Boston-based artist each year to work closely with a group of Teen Artists to produce a body of public art with community engagement at its core. This year’s Artist in Residence is Yuko Okabe (she/they). They are an illustrator who uses art to spread awareness about topics surrounding affordable housing, healthcare, and community development. Now, as the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts' 2025 Artist in Residence, their residency project, My Recipe, Our Potluck, is tackling another major element of daily life: food!
An illustration by Yuko Okabe of a savory oatmeal with fried egg, homemade kale and spinach pesto, and scallions.
Yuko has always been curious about food, so they jumped at the opportunity to explore the relationship between food, storytelling, and identity with this project. Growing up in a mostly white town in New Jersey, they had to contend with questions from classmates about the Japanese food they brought for lunch from an early age. But they were also an adventurous eater who has blossomed into a savory oatmeal connoisseur as an adult.
“My mom would cook mostly Japanese food, but she is also a very curious cook, so she would make things that were more like Chinese, Mediterranean, or Middle Eastern food, or she’d make lasagna for Thanksgiving just because she wanted to,” Yuko said. “So, I think I got my curiosity about food and cooking from her.”
In recent years, Yuko has come to see food as so much more than just a delicious source of nourishment. They have found food and meals to be an ideal impetus for gathering and a powerful means for sharing elements of identity with friends, new and old.
“I’ll sometimes have themed lunch parties with friends,” Yuko said. “Those help me maintain a sense of community, and especially post-COVID, they helped me reconnect with people in a very simple and tasty way.”
Beyond their love of food, Yuko was also drawn to this residency by its community engagement element and the opportunity to learn from organizations in the food space.
“I got really excited about working with local organizations like The Food Project, which grows its own food, the Daily Table, which sells food, and the Boston Public Library, which invites the community to cook food,” Yuko said. “I thought that would be a fun way to see these different parts of the food system and then invite the teens to document it.”
The real-world application of art to impact and educate communities was part of what drew Yuko to a career as an illustrator to begin with. Since then, community engagement has become one of the central tenets of their artistic practice.
“When I got to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), I started seeing more opportunities for what art can do. There, I realized that you can make illustrations for books, games, or something that communicates affordable housing to people,” Yuko said. “That sparked my interest in how I could imbue my other interests into art and have a career.”
Being an active community member has always been part of Yuko’s life, but it didn’t begin intersecting with their art until their junior year of college, when they applied for the Maharam STEAM Fellowship through RISD, which challenged them to collaborate with an organization that didn’t typically hire artists. Yuko found Mightier, a company that was working with Boston Children’s Hospital to create a biofeedback game to help children with emotional regulation challenges and saw an opportunity to contribute characters and stories to enhance the game.
“I think that was the first instance of me realizing I can be an illustrator, but also have it influence something like healthcare,” Yuko said. “That was a really lovely experience, so from there I just wanted to find more opportunities like that, which led me to another fellowship about affordable housing with the North Shore Community Development Coalition, and eventually to opportunities like this residency at the Eliot School.”
An illustration by Yuko Okabe exploring social equity as a theme of food justice, as described in "A scoping review of the conceptualizations of food justice" by Sandra Murray, Fred Gale, David Adams, and Lisa Dalton.
In the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts' 2025 Artist Residency, Yuko is excited to explore food justice and delve into personal stories about and connections to food with Teen Artists, Enijae Booke, Jacob De Palm, Diana Gasper, Lelio Leblanc, Aaliyah Levy, Laila Limontas, Dontaezjah Miller, Diligent Sankofa, and Jewel Sims. They will collect stories from each other and community members to investigate how communities view cultural resilience and resistance through a lens of food and gathering, how food travels through the industrial pipeline, and how individuals connect their identities and culture to food. Then they'll translate these stories and observations into illustrated works that use food ephemera, such as menus, recipe cards, and packaging, as framing devices.
“I love grocery stores. There are so many hidden gems there,” Yuko said. “So, I’m excited to tap into that love and that love of food that I think we all have and get some inspiration for artwork.”
During the residency, Yuko and the Teen Artists will participate in workshops at the Lincoln and Dudley Square farms run by The Food Project, a nonprofit that employs teenagers to grow food in urban and suburban community farms. They will also go on an excursion to observe and sketch at the Daily Table, a nonprofit that operates community grocery stores in Greater Boston.
The residency will also include two community cooking workshops at the Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library on July 22 and 23. There will be spaces for five members of the public to participate in each class, where they will learn to cook a dish and participate in a food-based art project led by Yuko and the Teen Artists.
The residency will culminate in an exhibition at the Piano Craft Gallery from August 22 to September 7, featuring the work of Yuko and the Teen Artists. Join us in experiencing and celebrating their creations, connecting our identities, culture, and stories to food. Experience this art in community and hear from the artists at our Opening Reception on August 22 at 6 PM.
More information on all of these events will be forthcoming, so make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter or follow us on social media to stay in the loop.
