“It’s Instagram’s world, and we’re all just living in it,” is a nice modified catchphrase we borrowed in the 2018 SVA Spring Journal to highlight some alumni and the way they use the social platform, and nearly three years later, the maxim feels truer than ever. Instagram boasts one billion monthly active users, has given us influencers, a barrage of different types of marketing, the advent of dozens of new tools—stories, reels, IGTV, live, Instagram Rooms, shopping and more to come—and has arguably shaped the way we live our lives online.

In the inaugural installment of our “who to follow on Instagram” column—SVA community members that include alumni, faculty, staff and beyond—we decided to focus on female artists. Many of theses artists already celebrated March's Women’s History Month in variously creative ways, are using their Instagram platform imaginatively on the daily, and, in general, are just casually doin’ it for the gram.

BFA Illustration faculty member and alumnus Yuko Shimizu (MFA 2003 Illustration as Visual Essay) is a renowned illustrator, designer and artist based in New York City. Known for her eye-popping illustrations, often used by cutting-edge pop culture-centric companies such as MTV, GQ, Rolling Stone, Nylon, D.C. Comics, the Criterion Collection and major publications like The New York Times, The New Yorker, WIRED, and more, Shimizu’s accolades are many (gold and silver medals from the Society of Illustrators, for example). Shimizu’s Insta account (@yukoart) is excellent for keeping up with her current projects, works-in-progress, and sometimes, her current mood.

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