Toru Sugita

Toru Sugita is a Japanese-American artist and acclaimed printmaker based in the San Francisco Bay Area whose work draws on light, shadow, architecture, and everyday spaces to create richly detailed etchings, aquatints, wood engravings, and prints that explore form, space, and visual perception.

He earned a Bachelor of Art Education from Kyoto University of Education, studied printmaking at Kyoto Seika University, and received an MFA in Printmaking from San Francisco State University in 2003. Sugita’s work has been shown widely in the United States, Japan, Mexico, and beyond, and is included in public and private collections; he also illustrated the award-winning book Floating Lanterns and Golden Shrines. In addition to his studio practice, he is a professor of printmaking and drawing at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California, where he leads the printmaking program and has taught since returning to the Bay Area in 2009.