Yoshida Naohiro, better known as DKC, is a graphic designer and professional snowboarder. Born in 1971 and based in Sapporo, he works out of the studio Northern Graphics.
DKC has spent decades shaping the look of Japanese snowboarding. He rides for and art-directs the snowboard brand UNIT MFG., and his gear graphics appear on FLUX bindings, Deeluxe boots, and Revolt Optical goggles. His visuals have featured everywhere from TOYOTA BIG AIR and PARK AIR to the TV programme NO MATTER BOARD, and he also produces snowboard events and snow parks and edits the culture magazine king garage magazine.
His paintings, released under his own label "horizon the art get into", carry the same energy as his riding: swirling suns, breaking waves, and Hokkaido's mountains drawn in bold lines and colour.
Aikawa Mitsugu channels the primal energy of line and form, using shapes as building blocks to create allegorical worlds.
His works weave together striking geometric patterns, natural forms, and contrasting motifs, unfolding like visual stories. Through timeless imagery that connects past and future, he explores the deep relationship between humanity and nature.
Balancing strong, structured backdrops with soft, flowing motifs, Aikawa creates a captivating harmony. His distinctive depictions of forests - through layered compositions, intricate detail, and nuanced color - draw viewers into worlds of depth and resonance.
Born in 1976 and based in Sapporo, Aikawa graduated from the Hokkaido College of Art and Design and began his career in 2008. He serves as visual director for the Tobiu Art Festival in Shiraoi Town and is active across a range of creative fields, including solo and group exhibitions, live painting at outdoor festivals, murals, commissions, and book illustrations.
Chihiro Tamura is an artist based in Sapporo and Niseko. Her work begins with the lines that nature has shaped over time: mountain ridges, wood grain, flowing water. She translates the tokimeki, the small thrill those moments spark, into vibrant colour, and Mount Yotei returns again and again as a motif.
Raised in a family with ties to a Shinto shrine, Chihiro grew up practising Japanese calligraphy, which still guides her sense of line. Before becoming an artist she worked in the travel industry and experienced landscapes in more than 40 countries.
In 2025 she was selected for an artist residency in Kutchan, holding solo exhibitions at the Shu Ogawara Museum of Art and Camp & Go. Away from the studio she finds inspiration road cycling, skiing, and camping with her family.
Frances Treveil is an artist, mountaineer, and snowboarder whose work is inspired by her journeys through mountains around the world. She seeks to capture the raw feeling of being in the mountains and translate that energy onto canvas.
Originally from the UK and now living in the French Alps, Frances spent a year in Niseko exploring Japan’s deep powder, striking landscapes, and rich culture. Seeing the growth of alpine-style bike parks and the work NAMBA and others are doing to build a vibrant mountain biking community in Japan has made her optimistic about the sport’s future.
Through her art, Frances aims to evoke the sense of wonder and awe she feels while climbing, snowboarding, or biking - allowing viewers to take a little piece of Japan’s mountain spirit home with them.
Joe Scott was born and raised in Birmingham, England, but found his artistic home in Sapporo.
A passionate sketcher since childhood, Joe rediscovered his creative side in his twenties through vector art. Influenced by vintage travel posters and national park illustrations, his work explores the idea of art as a form of discovery - creating imagined worlds or celebrating those just beyond reach.
After moving to Hokkaido straight out of university, Joe found endless inspiration in the landscapes outside his window. Now based permanently in Sapporo, he collaborates with local businesses on branding and design while creating National Park–style artwork celebrating Hokkaido’s mountains and landmarks.
Luke Sandalls is an Australian designer and artist who has called Niseko home since 2013. He now lives on the Iwanai mountainside with his wife, Tomomi, the creative behind Layer Niseko.
Through his studio, Sandls Design, Luke works on branding, design, and business development, while his looser personal pieces are often shown under the name MtnSea, inspired by two of the region's greatest muses.
His work is part sketchbook, part visual diary, drawing, painting, and writing as ways to explore flow, play, and meditation. Themes of identity, spirit, solitude, connection, and the balance between life and death thread through his eclectic practice, which continues to evolve as an exploration of being.
Peter Martin, aka The Rainbow Captain, is a Hokkaido-based artist originally from New York.
After moving to Japan in the mid-1990s, Peter spent over a decade working in Tokyo’s fashion industry and as an art director and production designer, crafting sets, props, and visual environments for international commercials and short films.
In recent years, he has traded city life for rural Hokkaido, dedicating himself to a more personal, exploratory art practice. His work reflects the nuanced perspective of a Westerner deeply immersed in Japanese culture, combining elements of vintage Japanese illustration, mid-century design, and Showa-era aesthetics to explore pattern, repetition, and cultural iconography.
He also creates a line of handmade omiyage - wearable objects and collectible trinkets made in limited runs using analog techniques, blending humor, craftsmanship, and nostalgia. New projects and collaborations are always on the horizon.
Remi Fukamachi is a photographer and adventurer whose work bridges cultures and landscapes.
Born in Tokyo to a Chinese father and Japanese mother, Remi lived with Indigenous communities in Australia and filmed documentaries about their way of life before turning professional in 2017. After a spell in Austin, Texas, she settled in Niseko, drawn by snowboarding and the outdoor life.
Her photography, shot for luxury hotels and resorts as well as riders in the backcountry, captures the raw energy of nature and the spirit of adventure in Japan's mountains. Off camera she practises survival training and hunting, reflecting her connection to nature and self-reliance.
Scott Wentworth is a multidisciplinary artist whose creative path has spanned glassblowing, painting, illustration, digital design, and tattooing.
Drawn to the bold imagery of American traditional tattooing, Scott completed a traditional apprenticeship in Jacksonville, Florida, between 2007 and 2008. Since then, tattooing has been his primary artistic focus.
Originally from Colorado, Scott moved to Niseko in 2019 to start a family with his wife, who is from Kutchan. He now runs 59 Niseko, his tattoo studio located in the heart of downtown Kutchan, where he continues to refine his craft and contribute to the region’s creative community.
Sumi Akemi is a fashion designer and artist at North Graphic in Sapporo, and the designer behind Naturalbicycle, the street and outdoor brand she helped start in 2003.
She got into graffiti art while studying at Sapporo Designer Gakuin, and after graduating in 1999 she and a few friends designed t-shirts and sold them online and at events. That turned into Naturalbicycle, named for the natural speed of a bicycle and the wider view that speed opens up. Sumi plans and designs the range, from prints to the shape of a hat, and has worked on collaborations with the outdoor magazine GO OUT and Columbia.
At the centre of the brand is the EZOBAND: a brown bear, an Ezo sika deer, a red fox, an Ezo squirrel and a Blakiston's fish owl, stacked up as Hokkaido's answer to the Bremen Town Musicians. Twenty-three years in, the band turns up across fashion, art, music and the outdoors.
Sumi also paints murals for restaurants and bars around Sapporo and live-paints at outdoor festivals. She has always worked close to home, with Mount Moiwa and the Toyohira River nearby and a city flat enough to ride across while an idea takes shape. Her design for NAMBA sends the band out of the city and down a Niseko mountain, the kind of descent riders make at Twin Peaks.
We're always open to new collaborations. Painters, illustrators, designers, photographers: if your work is inspired by the outdoors and mountain biking, get in touch. Your art reaches riders, and a portion of every sale goes back into the trails.
