At an age when most children are still dabbling in fingerpaints, Drue Kataoka picked up a brush and began learning a 2,000-year-old Japanese art form, sumi-e (soo-mi-AY). For 12 years, Kataoka worked to master traditional subjects like seascapes and bamboo shoots. In 1995, she received her han, the stamp of a professional sumi-e artist.
Now a Stanford junior majoring in art history, Kataoka is fusing her art with other interests: sports, music and campus architecture. Her trademark black-and-white paintings have popped up on wine bottles, CD covers, physics department brochures and the Hoover Institution's 1998 Christmas cards; her work has been displayed at the Coffee House and Arrillaga Family Sports Center. She even has a weekly feature in the Daily, "Cardinal Strokes."
Kataoka loves to capture pivotal moments in Stanford sports. She painted "Cardinal Catch of the Day" (above left) after spending time on the gridiron sidelines in 1997. "The ball is in the air, so the outcome is uncertain," she says. "The painting suspends you between two moments." In "Tiger Watch" (left) Tiger Woods dwarfs the trees behind him as he lines up a putt. "Is Tiger watching us, or are we watching him?" she asks.
