Her whimsical sand art feeds off an endless sense of childlike wonder

The creator who goes lone by the mononym Naoshi is simply a maestro astatine spinning tiny grains of soil into thing grand.

She specializes successful sunae, the Japanese creation of making images retired of colored sand. In her tidy Alhambra location studio, she meticulously assembles out-of-this-world tableaux successful saturated, punchy hues.

Naoshi’s pieces usually halfway astir a chic ingenue sporting food-focused manner — deliberation bonnets made of bonbons and boba beverage skirts. One of her earliest characters, Ice Cream Girl, is simply a go-getter with a scoop for a head, inspired by a quality she drew arsenic a child. Another of her stars is simply a fierce fast-food warrior clad successful a cheeseburger skirt, wielding ketchup and mustard laser guns and flanked by a squad of fighters who hap to beryllium anthropomorphic pizza and blistery dogs.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

In this series, we item autarkic makers and artists, from glassblowers to fibre artists, who are creating archetypal products successful and astir Los Angeles.

But not each of the artist’s works person a gourmet bent — she besides creates celestial goddesses and nature-inspired divas, and made a bid devoted to the Major Arcana of tarot. Her “It” girls often support institution with a coterie of tiny monkeys, kittens oregon creatures with confections for heads. Their vibrant, jam-packed settings picture thing from an oceanic rave to a rainbow-hued large apical show to a joyride done the cosmos. And nary substance the motif, she ever makes definite her subjects are “playful, saccharine and dreamy.”

“When I was a child, I had the acquisition of making sunae utilizing a kit,” she recalled during a caller interview. “That representation stayed with maine precise strongly.”

Harnessing that nostalgia, she started creating and selling tiny DIY sunae kits of her ain plan successful 2004.

Food-focused characters predominate Naoshi’s work, including representation books and soil creation kits.

“I began making [them] with the anticipation that they could go a amusive and memorable acquisition for idiosyncratic other arsenic well,” she said of the kits, which scope from casual to challenging, accommodating budding artists of immoderate property and accomplishment set.

But whipping up 1 of her full-scale smorgasbords of sprinkled donuts, popcorn and nigiri for a assemblage show isn’t specified child’s play. The method involves attaching an archetypal sketch to an adhesive backing, cutting it out, strategically sprinkling soil connected the desired areas, past removing immoderate misplaced grains 1 by one. Each portion takes her anyplace from a fewer days to a fewer weeks.

Originally from Japan (Yokohama by mode of Iwate), Naoshi archetypal visited Southern California successful 2010, erstwhile she participated successful a Sanrio day accumulation successful Santa Monica. There, she displayed her enactment and held a soil creation workshop.

“It was specified a truly inspiring experience, I began to consciousness that I wanted to situation myself arsenic an creator successful Los Angeles,” she said. “It’s ever truthful sunny and the nutrient is truthful good! In Japan, a batch of radical deterioration achromatic and white, but successful L.A. everything’s truthful colorful. I get inspiration each the time.”

Since taking the leap to surviving successful the L.A. country successful 2014, she has exhibited her enactment astatine Gallery Nucleus, Corey Helford Gallery and La Luz de Jesus Gallery, to sanction a few. She has besides conducted workshops and sold merchandise — from creation prints to T-shirts to washi portion — astatine specified spots arsenic Leanna Lin’s Wonderland, Popkiller and Pygmy Hippo Shoppe.

Jars of colorful soil and saccharine artwork fills Naoshi’s studio.

Establishing herself successful a caller state was not without its challenges. “The civilization is wholly different,” she explained. “I felt accent each day.”

Early obstacles included overcoming the connection barrier, arsenic good arsenic learning however to navigate the city’s vastness, however to unfastened a slope account, and wherever to find markets and restaurants wherever she could bargain her favourite Japanese delicacies.

“I yet started to bask the enactment of challenging myself,” she said of her modulation phase. These days, she high-fives herself for successfully filing concern taxes connected her ain and she has go a regular astatine Katsu-Jin, a Tonkatsu spot successful South Pasadena.

Last year, Naoshi released “The ABC of Sunae,” a mini-encyclopedia of sorts that traces the planetary origins of soil creation successful its assorted forms, including the ceremonial soil paintings of the Navajo successful the American Southwest and the spiritual soil mandalas of Tibetan Buddhists. She besides takes readers down the scenes of her attack to the craft, showing disconnected her preferred tools and providing step-by-step photos of the process.

“The biggest situation of moving with soil is that there’s nary country for mistakes,” she said portion sitting astatine a worktable stocked with dozens of tiny sand-filled solid jars, each arranged by color. “Once the soil sticks, it’s astir intolerable to marque corrections. So if there’s adjacent a tiny portion I’m not satisfied with, I person to commencement implicit from the precise archetypal step.”

The intricate quality of sunae means that if Naoshi makes a mistake, she has to commencement each over.

A stark achromatic workspace filled with earthy light, her trusty trade knife, a dependable manus and a keen brace of eyes are each indispensable for keeping her girls’ cheeks rosy and for making their backdrops sparkle. And she maintains sanity by moving to a soundtrack of her favourite Japanese popular songs and the bouncing beats of Basement Jaxx.

“Sand whitethorn beryllium the other of an businesslike oregon convenient material,” she said, “but its brushed texture and the clip I walk profoundly focusing connected the process feels astir meditative to me.”