Lifestyle
Her whimsical sand art feeds off an endless sense of childlike wonder
The artist who goes only by the mononym Naoshi is a master at spinning tiny grains of sand into something grand.
She specializes in sunae, the Japanese art of making images out of colored sand. In her tidy Alhambra home studio, she meticulously assembles out-of-this-world tableaux in saturated, punchy hues.
Naoshi’s pieces usually center around a chic ingenue sporting food-focused fashion — think bonnets made of bonbons and boba tea skirts. One of her earliest characters, Ice Cream Girl, is a go-getter with a scoop for a head, inspired by a character she drew as a child. Another of her stars is a fierce fast-food warrior clad in a cheeseburger skirt, wielding ketchup and mustard laser guns and flanked by a squad of fighters who happen to be anthropomorphic pizza and hot dogs.
In this series, we highlight independent makers and artists, from glassblowers to fiber artists, who are creating original products in and around Los Angeles.
But not all of the artist’s works have a gourmet bent — she also creates celestial goddesses and nature-inspired divas, and made a series devoted to the Major Arcana of tarot. Her “It” girls often keep company with a coterie of tiny monkeys, kittens or creatures with confections for heads. Their vibrant, jam-packed settings depict anything from an oceanic rave to a rainbow-hued big top performance to a joyride through the cosmos. And no matter the motif, she always makes sure her subjects are “playful, sweet and dreamy.”
“When I was a child, I had the experience of making sunae using a kit,” she recalled during a recent interview. “That memory stayed with me very strongly.”
Harnessing that nostalgia, she started creating and selling small DIY sunae kits of her own design in 2004.
Food-focused characters dominate Naoshi’s work, including picture books and sand art kits.
“I began making [them] with the hope that they could become a fun and memorable experience for someone else as well,” she said of the kits, which range from easy to challenging, accommodating budding artists of any age and skill set.
But whipping up one of her full-scale smorgasbords of sprinkled donuts, popcorn and nigiri for a gallery display isn’t mere child’s play. The technique involves attaching an original sketch to an adhesive backing, cutting it out, strategically sprinkling sand on the desired areas, then removing any misplaced grains one by one. Each piece takes her anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.
Originally from Japan (Yokohama by way of Iwate), Naoshi first visited Southern California in 2010, when she participated in a Sanrio anniversary exhibition in Santa Monica. There, she displayed her work and held a sand art workshop.
“It was such a really inspiring experience, I began to feel that I wanted to challenge myself as an artist in Los Angeles,” she said. “It’s always so sunny and the food is so good! In Japan, a lot of people wear black and white, but in L.A. everything’s so colorful. I get inspiration all the time.”
Since taking the leap to living in the L.A. area in 2014, she has exhibited her work at Gallery Nucleus, Corey Helford Gallery and La Luz de Jesus Gallery, to name a few. She has also conducted workshops and sold merchandise — from art prints to T-shirts to washi tape — at such spots as Leanna Lin’s Wonderland, Popkiller and Pygmy Hippo Shoppe.
Jars of colorful sand and sweet artwork fills Naoshi’s studio.
Establishing herself in a new country was not without its challenges. “The culture is totally different,” she explained. “I felt stress every day.”
Early obstacles included overcoming the language barrier, as well as learning how to navigate the city’s vastness, how to open a bank account, and where to find markets and restaurants where she could buy her favorite Japanese delicacies.
“I eventually started to enjoy the act of challenging myself,” she said of her transition phase. These days, she high-fives herself for successfully filing business taxes on her own and she has become a regular at Katsu-Jin, a Tonkatsu spot in South Pasadena.
Last year, Naoshi released “The ABC of Sunae,” a mini-encyclopedia of sorts that traces the global origins of sand art in its various forms, including the ceremonial sand paintings of the Navajo in the American Southwest and the spiritual sand mandalas of Tibetan Buddhists. She also takes readers behind the scenes of her approach to the craft, showing off her preferred tools and providing step-by-step photos of the process.
“The biggest challenge of working with sand is that there’s no room for mistakes,” she said while sitting at a worktable stocked with dozens of small sand-filled glass jars, all arranged by color. “Once the sand sticks, it’s almost impossible to make corrections. So if there’s even a small part I’m not satisfied with, I have to start over from the very first step.”
The intricate nature of sunae means that if Naoshi makes a mistake, she has to start all over.
A stark white workspace filled with natural light, her trusty craft knife, a steady hand and a keen pair of eyes are all essential for keeping her girls’ cheeks rosy and for making their backdrops sparkle. And she maintains sanity by working to a soundtrack of her favorite Japanese pop songs and the bouncing beats of Basement Jaxx.
“Sand may be the opposite of an efficient or convenient material,” she said, “but its soft texture and the time I spend deeply focusing on the process feels almost meditative to me.”
Lifestyle
Bill Maher is getting the Mark Twain Prize after all
Satirist Bill Maher is this year’s recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Maher will receive the award at the Kennedy Center on June 28th. The show will stream on Netflix at a later date.
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
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Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
Bill Maher will be receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor after all.
There’s been some confusion about whether the comedian and longtime host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher would, indeed, be getting the top humor award. After The Atlantic cited anonymous sources saying he was, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “fake news.” But today the Kennedy Center made it official.
“For nearly three decades, the Mark Twain Prize has celebrated some of the greatest minds in comedy,” said Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center’s vice president of public relations in a statement. “For even longer, Bill has been influencing American discourse – one politically incorrect joke at a time.”
Is President Trump, chair of the Kennedy Center’s board, in on the joke?
Maher once visited Trump at the White House and he tends to be more conservative than many of his comedian peers but after their dinner Trump soured on Maher, calling him a “highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT” on social media.
Maher’s acerbic wit has targeted both political parties and he’s been particularly hard on Trump recently, criticizing his decisions to wage a war with Iran and his personnel choices.
“Trump said, ‘when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.’ Um, who’s ‘we?,’” Maher said in a recent monologue.
Past recipients of the Mark Twain Prize include Conan O’Brien, Dave Chappelle, Jon Stewart, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy and Carol Burnett.
In a statement released through the Kennedy Center, Maher said, “It is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.”
Maher will receive the Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center on June 28. The show will stream on Netflix at a later date.
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Suit asks court to force Trump administration to use ‘The Kennedy Center’ name
Workers react to the media after updating signage outside the Kennedy Center on Dec. 19, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
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Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio is asking a federal court in Washington, D.C., to force President Trump and the board and staff of the Kennedy Center to revert to calling the arts complex The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
The motion, which Beatty filed on Wednesday, asks a federal circuit court judge to reverse the Trump administration and the center’s current board and staff’s decision to call the complex “The Trump-Kennedy Center.”
In the filing, Beatty’s attorneys wrote: “Can the Board of the Kennedy Center — in direct contradiction of the governing statutes — rename this sacred memorial to John F. Kennedy after President Donald J. Trump? The answer is, unequivocally, ‘no.’ By renaming the Center — in violation of the law — Defendants have breached the terms of the trust and their most basic fiduciary obligations as trustees. Shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Congress designated the Kennedy Center as the ‘sole national memorial to the late’ President in the nation’s capital.”

In a statement emailed to NPR Thursday, Roma Daravi, the vice president of public relations for the Kennedy Center, wrote: “We’re confident the court will uphold the board’s decision on the name change and the desperately needed renovations which will continue as scheduled.” NPR also reached out to the White House for comment, but did not receive a reply.
In December, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the complex would heretofore be called “The Trump-Kennedy Center.” Although the new moniker was never approved by Congress, the Center’s website and publicity materials were immediately updated to reflect the administration’s chosen name, and the same day as Leavitt’s announcement, Trump’s name went up on the signage of the complex’s exterior, over that of the slain President Kennedy.
Later that month, Rep. Beatty who serves as an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, sued Trump, members of the Kennedy Center board appointed by Trump, and some ex-officio members, arguing that the complex’s name had been legislated by Congress in 1964. Wednesday’s motion is part of that lawsuit.

In a press release sent to NPR on Wednesday, Rep. Beatty said: “Donald Trump’s attempt to rename the Kennedy Center after himself is not just an act of ego. It is an attempt to subvert our Constitution and the rule of law. Congress established the Kennedy Center by law, and only Congress can change its name.”
For many patrons, artists and benefactors of the Kennedy Center, the name change was the last straw in politicizing the performing arts hub. Following the White House announcement of the new name, many prominent artists withdrew planned performances there, including the composer Philip Glass (a Kennedy Center Honors award recipient, who received his prize during the first Trump administration), the famed Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz and the 18-time Grammy-winning banjo master Béla Fleck.
The Washington National Opera (WNO), which had been in residence at the Kennedy Center since 1971, also severed its ties in January after ticket sales dropped precipitously. Earlier this month, WNO artistic director Francesca Zambello told NPR, “We did try as best as we could to encourage [the patrons] that we are a bipartisan organization, but people really voted with their feet and with their pocketbooks. And so we realized that there was really no choice for us.”

On Monday, a coalition of eight architecture and cultural groups also sued Trump and the Kennedy Center board in federal court over the complex’s scheduled closing in July for unspecified renovations. Their suit seeks to have the White House and board members comply with existing historic preservation laws, and to secure Congressional approval before moving ahead with the renovation plans.
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