PositiveSolradGraced with a thorough, informative afterword by Ryan Holmberg, The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud is a generous, well-annotated retrospective, serving as both a fitting memorial and effective showcase for this iconoclastic artist ... As evidenced here, Kuniko Tsurita began with skillful but unremarkable genre-based work, but continued to dig deeper, drawing more upon real-world events and personal concerns—among them the complications of gender roles—and channeling them into challengingly abstract stories crafted with innovative, often surreal cartooning ... As Tsurita’s illness ground her down and her energies dwindled, perhaps this notion brought her the strength to face her demise—and whatever awaited afterward. It certainly brings this posthumous collection to a satisfying, if bittersweet conclusion. Though Tsurita trafficked in multiple genres and employed any number of artistic styles, her work had scope and poetry—and she gave it all she had to give. Though, perhaps, in the end, her most urgent theme was death itself, she examined it and transformed the dreaded subject into something ultimately life-affirming. The book feels of a piece, a tribute to an artist many of us had never known of previously, but can now honor.
