Meeting Magic's Newest Artists: Kozyndan

By Vorthos Mike

Posted on December 16, 2022

You only get one introduction, and for artists, that first work, that first portfolio piece must be eye-catching.

Getting commissioned by Wizards of the Coast to do a Secret Lair is good.

Being asked to create two sets is great.

Let's meet the artists, Kozyndan.

The first thing we must mention is that Kozyndan is actually two people.

Kozy and Dan.

Who are they? I reached out to them to find out exactly who they are, what makes them tick and help us all understand their secret lair creations a bit more.

So, Dan, Kozy, hello! Who are you and the obvious first question...um, you're a couple right?

Dan: "We have been married for almost 21 years, and started making art together a little before that while we were still dating, about 22 years ago while still in college, so our whole career has been under this one moniker of kozyndan.

"We don't have any one set process - sometimes one or the other of us might do an entire artwork on our own, sometimes we are literally painting on the same physical painting at the same time. Usually, we are kind of passing a piece back and forth - maybe I will draw the comp, and then she tightens it and starts to paint or color it, and then I finish it off at the end. These works for Magic Secret Lair were mostly done that way, and mostly digital with just the final linear being done with brush on paper."

They sent me a picture of Kozy with one of those final linears, a final lineart.

Hold up, is that a cat? We will need an introduction for Geoffrey on your cats. Who are they, what are their names, and what do they do?

Dan: "He might like our cats - they are strangely dog-like. This little girl, Lychee, loves playing fetch for hours! (I always say to her "Had I wanted to play fetch all day I would have actually gotten a dog!" but she ignores me and drops her mouse toy in front of me for another throw). She is slightly hesitant to explore new places, but if the boy cat, Sesame, who seemingly has ADHD (and too much personality) and is always in need of exploring new places, survives venturing into the wilds then she follows in a heartbeat. They are pretty inseparable. Both of them love meeting new people. Any time new folks come to our house these cats are all up in their grills and ready to plant themselves in people's arms for a spell. Scoundrels and charmers and loving as can be."

This is important information for everyone to know.

Back to the two of you. I see you used to be in Los Angeles, can you talk about your move and where you live now?

Kozy: "Dan was born and raised around Los Angeles and I was born here in Yamanashi, a small prefecture bordering Tokyo. It's close to Tokyo, but feels a world away. It is total inaka - a lot of mountains and small farms and no big cities. I had been wanting to get back to Japan, and take a break from city life, so we bought a 130 year old farmhouse here and had it renovated in 2019. This is technically in a city called Hokuto. It's big - about half the size of Los Angeles, but with 1/100th the population. Our little village is mostly rice paddies and a couple small blocks of old farmhouses. We initially left Los Angeles the day before the first lockdown in March 2020. It was supposed to be a two-month trip to finish up work on the house, after which we had planned to go back and forth, but the pandemic changed all that, and we have since moved out of the USA completely."

That is incredible. And your home is just beautiful.

Is there any local art community where you're at now?

Dan: "Weirdly there is. Since this is about two hours from Tokyo, and a kind of hippie/progressive sort of area, there are a lot of escapees from Tokyo who are doing their thing out here. This year some folks from Tokyo rented out the abandoned tripod factory in our village and have been turning it into a sprawling freeform arts complex with massive exhibition spaces and artist studio spaces, as well as space for other kinds of people exploring their own endeavors. They haven't put on live drawing events (or life drawing sessions) yet but they have an aquaponic farm and a craft brewery and a tiny house builder sitting alongside art exhibitions. Kozy is working with them to set up a ceramic studio at the moment. All our neighbors are old farmers, but weirdly there is a thriving art community hiding out amongst all the rice paddies."

Back to art! The secret lair artworks. How did this all begin?

Dan: "Art Director Tom Jenkot emailed us out of the blue in May of 2020, in the midst of lockdowns, and in the midst of us being in limbo and wondering what the heck was going to happen. I was supposed to go back to the US that month, but we weren't sure if I would be allowed back into Japan! We were focused fully on planting a bunch of food in case things went really badly. Haha! We were not making any art or even thinking about our career at the time."

"I have had some other artist friends do Secret Lair cards though and it always looked like a fun project. Tom initially offered us two sets (Lands and Non-Lands) straight out of the gate. We have no idea if that is the norm or not. I kind of knew exactly what I wanted to do for it right away, so we agreed to the project. But then we did not really start getting back into the studio for many many months. We were pretty busy re-learning the Japanese version of adulting - getting drivers licenses, adjusting to the concept that you pay taxes, bills, social security, and health care by handing money over to a random cashier at 7-11 (odd, right?). Tom just told us to take our time and that there was no rush. I don't think he realized that meant we wouldn't finish the cards for 18 months!"

Were you familiar with Magic prior to this?

Dan: "We were familiar with the game, and have friends that play, but we are not players."

Kozy: "Since we weren't players, it was a bit overwhelming! Where to even start on choosing what to make or how!? Ya know? Like, we didn't even realize land cards were a big deal until months later."

Dan: "Yeah, so we kind of just told Tom we wanted to do some cards where we could draw big weird characters and draw some nature stuff. They sent us some suggestions, we asked for a different card for one or two and then they set another suggested non-lands set and all of the cards sparked some kernel of an idea of how we could integrate our concept, and we just went for it.

We didn't have any idea whether they were good cards or not until Mike gave us some insight days ago!"

Dan: "Trying to stick with Kozy's theme of getting back to her cultural roots, my one and only concept for the sets was "What if some ukiyo-e artist in the 1800's had done these cards?"

"Those artists were making some super weird images back then, full of warriors and monks and strange monsters, and the style is so distinctive. We are by no means as good as one of those masters, but it was fun to just think about making artworks within the limitations of woodblock printing (and vaguely imitating that look has been a small part of our practice for the last 20 years). I really wish I could see Yoshitoshi's interpretation of Magic cards."

Art by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

www.japantimes.co.jp

Dan: "This was the jumping off point for our cards."

"As we started to flesh out each one we kept adding details that were specific to our home (since we weren't leaving the house that much during the first year of the Pandemic we drew inspiration from right outside our window) and our own work (we knew fans of our work would appreciate having bunnies in as many of the artworks as possible, even if that meant nothing to Magic players), and overall just wanted to make the series of cards an ode to Kozy's roots and to her home prefecture, Yamanashi."

Check out their social media accounts. They really like bunnies.

Changing gears, I am noticing a ton of your art is on washi paper. For us Americans, can you please explain more on it?

Kozy: "My hometown is famous for a few things, mainly fireworks and paper making. My family has been in the paper making business for generations, perhaps the last 200 years. Here in Japan, washi basically just means traditional handmade paper. It is usually made from the bark of just a few kinds of trees such as kozo, the gampi, mitsumata tree. Usually, it has really long fibers which makes it quite a bit stronger relative to its thickness compared to Western styles of paper and resists creasing. Historically, in Japan though this is just "paper" - this is the only paper Japanese artists would have been using in the pre-modern era (there are other materials like silk of course) to paint on."

"Part of this personal quest that I am on to reconnect with traditional Japanese culture was an interest in learning nihonga (traditional Japanese mineral-based pigment paint) so I did the inking with this paint on washing paper. The natural fiber look of washi paper also makes really cool looking prints though, so it fits well for the artwork we made."

What's next for you outside of signing cards for Magic? (Oh they will be calling soon, guaranteed.)

Kozy: "We are juggling a lot of different kinds of projects - including stuff that is outside our usual wheelhouse like developing a series of animated AR filters for locations in our city, but we mostly just have painting and sculpture exhibitions lined up steadily through late 2024 at galleries from Melbourne to Portland to Los Angeles to New Hampshire. We getting ready to just focus on our own personal work for the next couple years."

That sounds fantastic. Then the obvious next question, what does personal art look like for you?

Dan: "Lately it has been divided between our kozyndan paintings, and kozy doing her ceramic sculptures. A lot of galleries want to show both, but I think of her sculptures as her own separate art."

Dan: "The art we do together though is pretty all over the place - mostly weird nature paintings that are a bit funny, and lately kozy has wanted to make work that is based on Japanese traditions so the paintings are nihonga on washi and we are having them made into kakejiku (hanging scrolls)by a master scroll maker here in Yamanashi. We also plan to continue older series like our panoramic - which digitally colored pencil drawings, usually 360 degree images, of city intersections in places all over the world."

Kozy: "That series was a big part of our work together in the first decade of our career, but we haven't made one in almost a decade! I loved that project though (and nearly all those print editions are long since sold out) so I want to make a new one set here. All a part of this getting back to my roots thing these days."