Soft Wool, Sharp Tools. A recap from Risa Iwasaki Culbertson's talk on SOFT, October 2025.

Hand printed power jumpsuit, check ✓
Brightly colored power lipstick, check ✓
Shrimp shaped bolo tie, check ✓

Risa Iwasaki Culbertson’s outfit certainly was memorable, but the thing I’m going to remember most from her talk was the thread of soft and hard that was woven through her story and her work. As an artist, instructor, community organizer, and introvert, we soon learned why she felt like this month’s topic of “SOFT” was made for her.

Though an artist to the core, she decided to study business, where she experienced a mix of the softness of creativity with the rigidity of business school.

After college in tech-smothered San Francisco, she started a hand printed stationary company. She used a massive two thousand pound metal letterpress to craft heartfelt little handmade greeting cards.

During the pandemic she found needle felting. Shaping soft wool with sharp needles (another contrast,) into large-scale humorous and playful sculptures.This hard/soft theme continued to surface as she spoke from experience about grief’s role in creativity. When she was processing the loss of her dad to Parkinson’s she discovered that it was in her “biggest pains she produced her biggest works.”

In grief, the loneliness and temptation to isolate (especially for an introvert) was strong. But it was in community that her heavy heart was wrapped in softness.

When she was wrestling with anxiety over her first solo show, she learned that it takes vulnerability to be brave. Risa said that her “printing press became her shield,” and built her confidence. But this heavy metal also brought her to the softness of community, connecting her with other artists and neighbors.

We all got a little touch of that soft blanket called community in both the beginning and ending of her talk. She broke the ice by having us make funny faces at our neighbors, sharing that expressing silliness helps make us brave. She ended our time with a Q & A encouraging artists and business people to spend more time together, that we should lean into curiosity and playfulness when experiencing creative blocks, and invited us into community by connecting with her either at the Asian Art Museum or at her regular Drink and Draw events here in the city.

Written by community member Matthew Ronan (http://www.matthewronan.com/). Photos by Hunter Ridenour.