CS Artist Spotlight: Kathryn Otoshi and Her Amazing Creative Journey
The Creativity School features Kathryn Otoshi, an award-winning children's book author and illustrator, as part of our celebration of International Women's Month.
Kathryn Otoshi has enormously showcased her creativity and love in teaching our young creators of tomorrow!
Get inspired by her creative journey and learn about some of her crafts.
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Kathryn Otoshi, Multi-award-winning Author/Illustrator
Kathryn Otoshi is a multi-award-winning author/illustrator best known for her character-building book series, “Zero,” “One,” and “Two.”
At the Creativity School, she teaches simple techniques for creating colorful and meaningful popup cards. Here are some of the awesome popup card tutorials :
- Happy Birthday! Pop Up Card
- Bird Pop Up Friendship Card
- Pop Up Flower Appreciation Card
- Gift from the Heart Pop Up Card
Being part of the Creativity School
Hydi and Kathryn had a hearty talk where they talked just about everything – her creative journey, her passion, and her future books.
Hydi Hoeger: Hey, Kathryn! How are you?
Kathryn Otoshi: Doing great! How are you?
Hydi Hoeger: I am good! Can you believe it’s been a year!
Kathryn Otoshi: Yes. A lot has happened in a year, hasn’t it?
Hydi Hoeger: Yeah. Yeah, we’ve been able to work together, which I never had the pleasure of before, and that was one of the highlights of my year.
“Creativity School has this impact on me.”
Kathryn Otoshi: You know what, Creativity School has this impact on me. You know, just having the creative influence of you guys coming in, and I really feel like that’s so important to have creativity every day in our lives.
Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, and I think it helps us cope with difficult things that we’re going through. You could fall back and help us channel emotions.
Kathryn Otoshi: Yeah, and I would look forward to the 3 PM, at least California time. Like I’m going to check in to see what they’re doing.
Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, I’m so glad! You have to give us a shout-out next time. Well, I just kind of wanted to thank you for being an awesome friend and friend of Creativity School, and just an awesome example for a lot of people, a lot of kids of an excellent woman who has made her own path in the world. You are an extraordinary example.
Kathryn Otoshi: Well, thank you! You know, it didn’t just happen, like with a snap of the fingers. There were problems and challenges that we all have to overcome and getting to a place to realize that I wanted to publish my own books or even being an artist was certainly a journey.
Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, and I like to call it the creative journey.
Kathryn Otoshi: It is a creative journey!
Kathryn and Lucasfilms Ltd.
Hydi Hoeger: Let me see how my facts lineup with reality. You worked for Lucasfilm as an Art Designer? Director
Kathryn Otoshi: I was at Industrial Light & Magic under the Visual Effects side of the whole Lucas family and entertainment. And yeah, I was the Graphic Design Multimedia Art Director [which is a very long and lengthy title], but it’s the people that I was working with that brought the talent to the group. We did a lot of different designs for all the different Lucas companies at the time.
Hydi Hoeger: That’s incredible! And that has a huge umbrella, too. People think of Star Wars or E.T. or some of these bigger names. There’s a huge range of things that Lucasfilm does.
Kathryn Otoshi: Yeah, Lucasfilm, LucasArts- that was there at the time- and Industrial Light & Magic. So there’s like fingers going out from that hand.
Shifting to Children’s books
Hydi Hoeger: But then you decided that you wanted to go into books. Did it just one day, you woke up and you’re like, “You know, I think I’ll try books.”
Kathryn Otoshi: I always love books and reading and stories, and one thing that I do mention sometimes when I’m talking to kids is I see them almost like windows or doors that can open up our minds.
“Books are all magical portals that I can walk through.”
Kathryn Otoshi: When you open it up, it’s like a door that opens up and I can easily recall when I was young, my mom loved books. She passed on that love and passion of reading to me. Sometimes, she would volunteer at the public library, and I’ll be there and wait for her. One day, you know, I was reading a book and it occurred to me, “Oh my goodness. There are talking creatures and there are new people I can meet; there are new lands I can investigate and explore through the part of the book. When I looked around, of course, there were hundreds of books and I was like, “Wow, they’re all magical portals that I can walk through” and that’s how I saw books and so I always wanted to be connected to that magic.
Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, just an explosion of imaginations.
Kathryn Otoshi: Yeah, just all around where you can see, you know, somebody else’s perspective and experience someone else’s culture or explore someone else’s imagination and I feel like it’s kind of nice to explore somebody else’s thoughts.
Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, very healthy actually. And it’s not just one or two people, you know. There are thousands and millions of people that put their imagination and ideas out there and collaborated.
Kathryn Otoshi: Reading and collaboration, too. With the art and the writing and how the design brings it all together. It is a pretty magical world out there having books be a part of your life.
Hydi Hoeger:Oh my library heart approves of that message. [smiles]
Kathryn’s Journey as a Children’s Book Author
Hydi Hoeger: So you decided to pursue the traditional route of publishing, you tried that out and you have been published traditionally, but you’ve also started your own business?
Kathryn Otoshi: Yeah, I did. So what happened was I really kept hearing as an adult how hard it was to get a children’s picture book published, and don’t quit your day job, and so forth and I thought about that and I was working in the film industry and I’m like [not going to quit my day job yet]. I was freelancing and I decided to just go ahead and what would it be like to kind of look under the hood of the car and see how it works. It was kind of this new adventure that I felt like I was pioneering. I’m at a time when it was not something that was condoned as much to self-publish. In fact, it was discouraged, but I kept saying, you know, this is just something that I’m going to discover. It’s my expensive hobby. So I treated it almost like this very expensive hobby that I was doing and it was such a passion for me that I just wanted to keep it going. It didn’t need at the time to make money.
“It was something that I want to continue doing through the rest of my life”
Kathryn Otoshi: It was something that I just felt like I wanted to learn about and I knew that I wanted to continue doing it through the rest of my life. Because I didn’t put pressure on it, I learned more about how to do things and then took a few tries, but then, one of my books started to take off. The rest was history.
Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, it was the one and it is titled One. [laughing]
Kathryn Otoshi: Yeah, it was the “One” and why not be like the one to publish it yourself because that was the one book that people were saying, “No, you should go through the traditional route.” I’m like, yeah, but it’s about the power of One. You know, here I am. We have a lot of people that end up supporting and helping you. My husband was very supportive and friends were supportive, and friends like you still support books in reading and in supporting other artists, too. It becomes a community.
Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, I feel like our community is very supportive of each other. There’s healthy competition and everyone wants to succeed but it’s not that cutthroat business mentality that other businesses have. It is a very nurturing environment.
Kathryn Otoshi and Arree Chung
Kathryn Otoshi: I think it’s really important to foster a nurturing environment. Arree and I met through a critique group, kind of a group where we nurtured each other's stories and talked about art. As artists too, we grow and we need support from other artists, to get other perspectives and that’s why in Creativity School, it’s really wonderful to be able to see what other people are doing. It is fostering all sorts of influx of other ideas from all over the world and you also share that particular piece of art that you’re instructing.
Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, that was one of my favorite things about the school. Well, you know that global awareness of different ways that we do things, and I love seeing the kids Inspire each other and be motivated by each other. I’ve seen parents that will go through with their kids and look at other kids’ work and you know, they’ll pat them and say, “That’s great!” or “I want to do that, too!”
Kathryn Otoshi: I was amazed by posts, too and I’m like, “Really, that person was five or six years old?”, and I find that so inspiring and because you have such a range doing these great Zoom classes and anybody can access it. The world is your oyster, so to speak. Everybody is contributing from all ages.
Hydi Hoeger: And we’re opening up to older groups, too! That’s a journey that I can’t wait to see, you know, as they [kids in Creativity School] progress. There are some kids when they’ve learned all that they can from the classes that we have, and they’re ready to move on and it’s just amazing to see.
Kathryn’s childhood
Hydi Hoeger: Speaking of which, let’s go back to your childhood. You mentioned your mom takes you to the library with her. Was there a lot of fostering of creativity? of arts?
“Art was a huge part of my childhood.”
Kathryn Otoshi: You know, I think in the beginning, definitely. I remember clearly at a young age, they would be excited that I was drawing and I would show them things. That love certainly was nurtured and I feel like I had also time to draw. Art was a huge part of my childhood.
Hydi Hoeger: Was there ever a point where your family was like, “Okay, that’s enough.” or “It’s time to put that away and be serious with your school works.” or “Go make money now”?
“I think some other reason why we put our creativity to the side and just so you know, ”Now I need to get serious”, it’s because we don’t know how to make a living at it.”
Kathryn Otoshi: I think part of the obstacles, as you know, you are working and trying to get better at drawing or painting or whatever creative venture that you’re interested in, and then it’s sort of this thing where you feel like you’re obligated to kind of put it away and then now get serious about something, [That’s not to keep bringing it back to Creativity School, but Arree is in a class called Money Matters]. It’s interesting! I think some other reason why we put our creativity to the side and just so you know, ”Now I need to get serious”, it’s because we don’t know how to make a living at it.
Kathryn Otoshi: We don’t know how to bring the practical aspects of how I keep doing this now. So I kept doing it through college and I was fortunate enough to get a job in a creative field. But I think most of us have to realize how to incorporate art and make a living at it – to be able to continue and foster it. I was thinking I had to put it aside and thankfully I did not, but there’s a time where I was told, you know that, to get a serious kind of thing.
Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, and we hear that from everybody. It’s not just ourselves. It’s not just our parents. We hear from the teachers and schools. There’s this statistic where a lot of creative development stops around 6th, 7th, 8th grade, you know, and that’s where they stop. You can look at an adult’s drawings and 6th graders’ drawings and a lot of times they’re going to be very similar, [but sometimes, the 6th grader’s better] [laughing]. That is the mentality that we need to change because art and creativity are so healthy for those teenage years’ ways of expressing and communicating what they’re going through.
Her books tell something about her life
“So the interesting part of me doing books is each book represents a challenge that I’m working to overcome.”
Kathryn Otoshi: Yeah, I think so too. I mean so much about my own stories came from challenges or problems that I have. Even going back to my childhood and remembering some things that happened related to bullying, that still bothers me, to things that have to do with diversity, or how we come together after a conversation where you don’t agree on something, or after you’ve had an argument. All my books have to do with the problems of kind of overcoming these challenges and truthfully, the book doesn’t get published until in my own life, that problem kind of gets resolved. So the interesting part of me doing books is each book represents a challenge that I’m working to overcome.
Hydi Hoeger: Now we have to go read all of your books to see what you’ve overcome. [smile] I think if there’s a way for people to connect with others and say, “Okay, I’m not alone in this experience that I’m having, and this is the way that Kathryn resolved it.”, “What are my options?”, “Can I do it the way she did it?”
Kathryn Otoshi: I have been saying this to someone else but you know books are so important, at least with picture books. We learn visually. We learn audibly through sound when they’re being read to, so our minds are engaged, and as you and I are connected with character-building, we learned through our hearts too by being inspired. We certainly learn through our bodies, too. When we take some of these concepts of kindness, for example, or doing a project that relates to actions and combining kindness together, we see something tangible being created. When we look at it, we’re forever reminded, “I did that project to relate to kindness or being kind for just somebody”. That’s how I feel like books and reading and creativity is how we all learn in its entirety with all the senses.
Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, and that’s kind of how I see life, too – everything is interconnected in this woven tapestry. We have all of these differences but our brains are wired to connect certain things in our hearts, and we take those emotions and make them into things. It’s a beautiful woven web.
Kathryn Otoshi: It really is. It’s like how we’re connecting. It is also about expression in communication and I really feel like the passion to want to reach out and to tell a narrative or to communicate an idea or a concept, is sort of what the driving force is.
Hydi Hoeger: Yeah, that’s great! I think arts, creativity, and books – those things can teach us about how culturally we’re so different from each other but we’re all fundamentally the same- same wishes, and hopes, and desires, and things like that.
Hydi Hoeger: Arts is one of those ways; books are another way. We can see the world properly sometimes through arts in ways that we can’t see in other ways. You read a news article and it’s got this by a slant, but you read a book written by somebody from another land, or about their upbringing, and you have a better understanding of their experience.
Kathryn Otoshi: Absolutely. I feel like books and reading completely do that, and it enables us to open up our minds to these new perspectives.
Inclusivity and Diversity
Hydi Hoeger: So you mentioned inclusivity and diversity. As a child, do you feel a little bit different than some other people? Was that a prominent feature in your youth?
Kathryn Otoshi: Yeah, it was a huge part of my youth that I never actually talked about while I was going through it, but I lived in the area for whatever reason at the time, there is nobody that really looked like our family for a very long time. I felt that I did not physically belong and I feel like I used art as a way to make me sort of understand the world a little bit better. But also was something that I brought into my own art later where I talked a little bit about how you see yourself in the world and how you look for that in the world and it makes you feel like you want to belong.
Kathryn Otoshi: I started to realize through art and expressing myself into writing and also character building – courage, kindness, and being brave – are all things that it took a long time to develop. But I realize those are things that are lasting so I very much connect my arts and creativity on how we treat others in kindness and how we express ourselves as artists. All kinds of together embody who you are and it has filled up that hole that I had since childhood and I feel like it really made me into the person I am today. I guess if we’re working conceptually, the goal is we fill ourselves up with creativity, with kindness, with being a respectful, with being more open-minded, and it gets so full that it overflows and we’re able to emote and express these things and let it go out into the world and that’s how we are able to stand up straight and tall. That’s kind of a backstory about myself.
Hydi Hoeger: I have goosebumps! How would you suggest to kids on how they can help when they see somebody struggling, or someone who might seem a little lonely or different than others? What advice do you have for kids to reach out and to help others?
“A lot of times, it can just start off with a “Hello”, and your “Hi” can make someone's day.”
Kathryn Otoshi: I think it’s just as simple as, “Hey, how’s it going?”, or “Hey, we’re sitting over here, you wanna join?” But a lot of times, it can just start off with a “Hello”, and your “Hi” can make someone's day. Just by noticing them and seeing them, and it's important to be seen. It’s one step at a time and sometimes it’s hard to be that person to kind of walk over to somebody else. They might say “No”, maybe they want to spend time by themselves. But a lot of times when we’re trying to find our own voice and you think of that person who’s sitting there by themselves, it’s almost like you kind of warm up the situation to an engaging one.
Hydi Hoeger: I love that! I think there's so much value in the action in doing something. We can see a problem and wish we could fix it. But you know, it's not until we take action. We did something and we extended the hand for that invitation.
Kathryn Otoshi: It's not easy for any of us. Sometimes we just get overwhelmed with our own thing and it goes back to opening up our perspectives when we read, when we express ourselves, when we're doing art, when we're surrounding ourselves with other perspectives than other artists and creative people. It does open ourselves to become more empathetic.
Future Books
Hydi Hoeger: Did you wanna talk about what you’re doing right now? Any projects that you have going on?
Kathryn Otoshi: Yes! I am working on something called, Lunch Every Day, that’s a new book. And also a new book called Calling the Wind. Both of them have to do with something that I’ve experienced in the last few years.
Lunch Every Day
Kathryn Otoshi: Lunch Every Day has to do with a friend of mine who I became close with simply because I was invited to speak to schools. He kept inviting me back to the schools and we became friends over the course of a few years, and then he does all these anti-bullying programs and gang interventions and community building programs and initiatives, and I was so impressed. So one day, we went to lunch together and I was like, “You’re so amazing! How do you do it all?” He kind of looked at me and he said, “You know, I was a bully growing up.”, and he says, “I just wanted to tell you that is almost like a fess up.” I almost dropped my fork and I said, “Really? What turned you around?”, and he talks about how somebody did something for him.
Kathryn Otoshi: And that was very thoughtful and kind, and it made him think and see himself as somebody of value and because the person just didn't do it once but did it over and over every day,it had a huge lasting impact. My friend Jim saw himself differently and saw a different path that he can take in. He realized and decided to take a positive path and go in the direction of helping others in education.
Kathryn Otoshi: Jim takes this kid’s lunch at school everyday and people look at his actions and, of course, are upset by his behavior. No one can really change him but no one is asking why. Why does Jim take somebody else’s lunch? Why is it a lunch? Is he hungry? What’s going on with him. When we take a moment to think beyond just the initial reaction, we start realizing there’s a lot more to this kid than meets the eye and Jim himself wishes he can break out of the stigma of being a bully but certainly that’s what he feels like and he’s built around in that label.
Kathryn Otoshi: One day the kid who he’s been picking on at taking lunch everyday invites the whole class to a party. Jim’s not gonna go but everybody is going in. He has a change of heart that day and decides that he wants to try and go. While he’s walking up to the kids house and it feels like this huge thing where even the stairs, you know, there’s this perspective of him kind of going up and what happens is he goes there and sees the mom holding the kids birthday cake and everybody in the living room celebrating. He’s thinking, “I’m going to leave. Everybody’s here. I don't fit in”.
Kathryn Otoshi: But while he's sitting in the living room, the mom sees him and she marches right up to him and he's like, “I am in so much trouble”.He’s thinking, “She’s going to yell at me. Everybody's going to hear, like please, don't yell.” In a real quiet voice, she kneels down and says, “Jimmy, what would you like for lunch tomorrow?”
Kathryn Otoshi: And he’s taking nothing. “I don’t want anything.”, but he's all tongue-tied and she says, “I hear you, like my lunches. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make a second lunch and my son will bring it for you everyday.”
Kathryn Otoshi: And he says, “You know what? She did. And that's how I got lunch everyday and a whole lot more”. Jim Perez is a real person and one of my favorite people on the planet.
Calling the Wind
Kathryn Otoshi: Another book called Calling the Wind which has to do with the wind telephone in Japan was done by somebody who basically – his cousin passed away and he did not know how to voice his grief. So tangibly what he did is, he got a European phone booth and installed it in his backyard garden and he would go there. It wasn't connected to anything but he would talk to his cousin and it really helped release the words and express themselves. Then after the tsunami hit several years ago, people talked about the booth and asked if they could go there to talk. Then it's become a mecca for people to be able to express grief but find the words to talk to the person that's passed away, and we talked about passing away. But you know love certainly continues on for that person and I kind of believe, just like the wind, you can't see it, but you know it's there We don't know what sort of out there but I believe that thinking an intention, there is a way for loved ones to know and secure. I had somebody in my own life that passed away and my friend Trudy, who’s the author, had her sister passed away and it was really hard to find the words, and the line came about because she told me about this wind telephone and that was the book that we both wanted to collaborate on.It’s truly a book about hope and healing.
Hydi Hoeger: Wow, and I think that, especially at this time, is so meaningful.
Kathryn Otoshi: Yeah, we have experienced loss in different ways: lost a relationship or lost a physical in a person that we love, their physicality is no longer with us. But how does that transpire for us to still continue loving somebody.
Hydi Hoeger: Do you have release dates or anything for either of these yet?
Kathryn Otoshi: It should be out next year, probably in Fall, we’re still not sure of the date but will be in Penguin Random House. It’ll be in different kinds of illustrations too, and you can see some of them that I'm working on. My studio space is just for the kids out there. It’s very small, it’s just a room. It’s not this huge space, and we kind of make do with what we have and be resourceful. I didn’t have big wall panels that I had before that can move around, but the door works, too! Yeah, everything has just become a way where we adjust and evolve.
Hydi Hoeger: Wow. Well, I can't wait for either of those books. I am so excited for what you create always. Well, it has been so awesome to visit with you again.
Kathryn Otoshi: Me to Hydi, It’s just always a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. See you soon. and hopefully, I see you online and I love being a part of Creativity School.
Hydi Hoeger: All right, talk to you soon!
Watch more of Kathryn Otoshi and Hydi's lovely talk here:
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