focuses

Artist Ako Castuera is best known for her work on the award-winning animated series “Adventure Time.” As a writer and storyboard artist, she helped intrepid heroes Jake the Dog and Finn the Human become iconic toon characters.

Though she brought flying rainbow unicorns and a platoon of plotting penguins to life on screen, there’s more to Castuera’s resume than hyper-imaginative animation.

Ceramist, writer and storyboard artist Ako Castuera in her studio.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

The Echo Park-based creative is also a professional ceramicist whose hand-built vessels and sculptures have been on display at the Japanese American National Museum of Art, Oxy Arts and the Oakland Museum of Art.

In this series, we highlight independent makers and artists, from glassblowers to fiber artists, who are creating original products in and around Los Angeles.

While Castuera’s studio is filled with its fair share of playful “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”-themed ceramic charms and anthropomorphic banana figurines, her craft is just as much devoted to highlighting Southern California’s natural resources and Indigenous people, as well as her own Mexican-Japanese heritage.

“‘Whimsy’ is a word that’s been applied to my work a lot. This is not my word,” she said during a recent tour of the Monrovia workspace she shares with her husband, artist Rob Sato, and fellow ceramicist Rosie Brand.

Ako Castuera’s work is anthropological and at times unusual, like her foot box sculptures. She also feels a special connection to her tools. (Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

“Not that whimsy is negative, but I do feel like it doesn’t really get a handle on the substance of what I feel I’m working with, as far as the depth of the clay, the depth of the experience, of the land.”

She sat perched on a stool at her workbench, using a smooth stone to grind soil clumps into fine dust as she talked. She collects the red earth during nature walks around the San Gabriel Mountains area — whether the riverbed of the Arroyo Seco, or the foothills of Claremont, her hometown.

“This is special dirt,” she explained.

To her, it has a presence, a life of its own and a cherished history. She uses it to make anything from trinket boxes to ornate geometric vases to statuettes of quizzical creatures.

Some of her most recent creations stand on a nearby wooden shelf. They’re ceramic depictions of Pacific tree frogs and great herons, both denizens of the L.A. River. The waterway has long been a source of inspiration for Castuera.

Ako Castuera’s work ranges from massive pieces to the miniature, like these figurines.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

“I love the L.A. River,” she said. “It’s my neighbor. It’s my teacher. It’s a place where I walk and bike.”

She regards the river as a muse and wants to inspire Angelenos of all ages to appreciate it. To that end, she teaches youth workshops at the riverside arts hubs Clockshop and Sooki Studio. What’s more, the river was a “main character” on “City of Ghosts,” the L.A.-celebrating, Emmy-winning Netflix animated series she directed. She’s even been known to use some of its water to transform soil into moldable clay.

“The more people who are brought into a sense of kinship with the river, the better,” she said. “Because then, they really feel like ‘The river takes care of me; I want to take care of the river.’”

Castuera’s work has an anthropological bent, as well as an ecological one. For example, her research into Southern California’s Kumeyaay and Cahuilla Indigenous tribes inspired a series of large jars patterned after ollas, traditional pots used for water and seed storage. She plans to incorporate these jars into an immersive installation that will be on view at the Candlewood Arts Festival in Borrego Springs in March and April. And last fall, she hosted a community event with Los Angeles Nomadic Division in which she discussed how soil played a vital role in the societies of both the Gabrielino-Tongva tribes of L.A. and the Ryukyuan people of her mother’s native Okinawa.

Finding the sweet spot where cultures combine is a constant source of motivation for Castuera. She’s created her own twist on shisa, lion-dog statues that are common sights all around Okinawa. And she’s currently working on a collection of small sculptures honoring her patrilineal ties to Puebla, Mexico. Her “taco babies” were inspired by one of the region’s best-known dishes, tacos árabes, which combine flavors from Mexico and the Middle East.

“I was thinking about the beauty of being in a living mix and what that would look like personified,” she said of the wee figures wrapped in colorful tortilla-like blankets.

Ako Castuera makes ceramics for the love of the process, not the final product.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Some of Castuera’s work makes it into gallery shows and some she sells. But just as often, she smashes it and takes the soil back to where she originally found it. It’s a habit of creating and destroying that she formed as a student at Claremont High School, where she studied the craft for two semesters, yet fired zero pieces.

“I don’t think I could’ve articulated this at 15, but it’s about the process of building, not the process of creating a product. It’s about working with the material — just making the space and the time for that practice,” she said.

“The excitement and the magic is really about the discovery of the unexpected. It’s so engrossing and it really just gets me engaged with life.”

The schism between Democratic environmental ideals and California voters’ anxiety about affordability, notably gas prices, were on full display during an environmental policy forum among some of the state’s top Democratic candidates for governor on Wednesday.

The Democrats questioned the economic impact Californians could face because of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s goal to have the state transition to zero-emission vehicles, a policy that would ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035. The Trump administration has attempted to negate the policy by canceling federal tax credits for the purchase of such vehicles along with invalidating California’s strict emission standards.

“It’s absolutely true that it’s not affordable today for many people to choose” an electric vehicle, said former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine. “It’s the fact that, particularly with expiring federal subsidies and the cuts that [President] Trump has made, an electric vehicle often costs $8,000 or $10,000 more. If we want people to choose EVs, we have to close that gap.”

Both Porter and rival Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra, who served as Health and Human Services secretary under former President Biden, said that as governor they would focus on making low-emission vehicles more affordable and practical. Porter said the cost of buying a zero-emission car needs to be comparable with those that run on gas, and Becerra said California needs to have enough charging stations so drivers “don’t have to worry can they get to their destination.”

“We know our future is in clean energy and in making our environment as clean as possible,” Becerra said. “We’ve got to make it affordable for families.”

Porter and Becerra joined two other Democrats in the 2026 California governor’s race — former hedge fund founder turned environmental advocate Tom Steyer and Rep. Eric Swalwell of Dublin — at the Pasadena event hosted by California Environmental Voters, UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, the Climate Center Action Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. The Democrats largely agreed about issues such as combating climate change, accelerating the transition to clean energy and protecting California’s water resources.

The coalition invited the six candidates with greatest support in recent public opinion polls. Republicans Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff, and Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, did not respond to an invitation to participate in the forum, which was moderated by Sammy Roth, the writer of Climate-Colored Goggles on Substack, and Louise Bedsworth, executive director of the UC Berkeley center.

Newsom, who has acknowledged that he is considering a run for president in 2028, is serving the final year of his second term as governor and is barred from running again.

The state’s high cost of living, including high gas prices, continues to be a political vulnerability for Democrats who support California’s progressive environmental agenda.

In another controversial issue facing the state, most of the Democratic candidates on Wednesday distanced themselves from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta tunnel, a massive and controversial proposal to move water to Southern California and the Central Valley. Though it has seen various iterations, the concept dates back to Gov. Jerry Brown’s first foray as California governor more than four decades ago.

Despite Newsom’s efforts to fast-track the project, it has been stalled by environmental reviews and lawsuits. It hit another legal hurdle this month when a state appeals court rejected the state’s plan to finance the 45-mile tunnel.

Swalwell, Porter and Steyer argued that there are faster and less expensive ways to collect and deliver water to thirsty parts of California.

“We have to move much faster than the Delta tunnel could ever move in terms of solving our water problems,” Steyer said, adding that data and technology could be deployed to more efficiently deliver water to farms.

Swalwell said he does not support the project “as it’s designed now” and proposed covering “400 miles of aqueducts” with solar panels.

During Wednesday’s forum, Becerra also committed a gaffe as he discussed rooftop solar programs for Californians with a word that some consider a slur about Jewish people.

“We need to go after the shysters,” Becerra said. “We know that there are people who go out there to swindle families as they talk about rooftop solar, so we have to make sure that that doesn’t happen so they get the benefit of solar.”

The term is not viewed as derogatory as other antisemitic slurs and was routinely used in past decades, a spokesperson for the Becerra campaign noted after the event.

“Secretary Becerra never knew this word to be offensive and certainly he meant no disrespect to anyone,” said a campaign spokesperson. “He was talking about protecting the hardest-working and lowest-paid Californians who are often taken advantage of by unscrupulous actors.”