Gyotaku by Lisa Lee

Gyotaku by Lisa Lee is a working studio on Old Highway in downtown Islamorada, built around a Japanese tradition that began as a way for fishermen to record a catch before cameras existed. The name comes from the Japanese words for fish and rubbing, and the process is exactly that: ink the fish, lay paper over it, and rub until the impression comes up.

Lee trained for it properly. She studied printmaking and abstract painting at Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland, then went to Japan to learn from Master Masatzu Matsunaga and works in Takuseikai, the method he developed. She is a professional member of the Nature Printing Society and of Gyotaku Art of Europe, and her work has been featured on PBS’s Art Loft and on Discovery Channel’s “Only in the Florida Keys.”

The practice stays close to the original. She works from fresh fish, uses a non-toxic black ink so the fish is still edible afterward, and prints onto kozo paper, the traditional Japanese mulberry paper, imported from a small papermaker in Japan, so no two rolls behave quite the same. Where she parts from tradition is color. Classical gyotaku inks only the eye; Lee trims the paper at her studio and paints the fish back to full color, with the eye detailing done last and slowest. Finished pieces are professionally photographed, archived and framed.

The studio carries originals and limited reproductions, and she takes commissions, having worked from catches brought in by local captains and fishing crews as well as her own trips. Alongside the prints there are notecards, pillows, blankets and candles carrying the fish images, plus abstract work of her own.

Lee grew up in Fort Lauderdale, in a family that has been coming to Islamorada since the early 1960s, and the pitch she makes for the work is that it unites fine art and fishing, which in this part of Florida is not a small thing.