Sneak preview of the new collage collection

“fog becoming redwoods” is 8 x 10, made of paper, acrylic paint, and adhesive on illustration board. © Annette Makino 2020.

First of all, I want to thank everyone who responded to my last post (Big Changes in the Studio), where I shared my new artistic direction creating Japanese-inspired collages. I was genuinely uncertain whether this big shift in style and technique would appeal to my longtime fans and customers. 

But based on your enthusiastic responses, I have gone ahead and designed a line of fifteen new greeting cards based on my collages. These new cards should be back from the printer on Monday. To sneak a peek at the new collection, see this page of all my Makino Studios card designs. I’m excited to share my new designs for the holidays, birthdays, sympathy and more.

I’m also very happy about my new 2021 calendar of art and haiku. This is my eighth year of producing these—and my favorite yet. Arriving next week, these mini-calendars feature a dozen of my new collages along with original haiku.

I’m not able to do any in-person holiday fairs this year, and some of my retailers are seeing reduced sales during this pandemic. Consequently, I have printed 100 fewer calendars than usual. So order soon to be sure to get enough for yourself and for holiday gifts!

My collages, using discarded materials such as old letters and canceled checks as well as hand-painted washi papers, may be a fitting medium for this strange, disjointed time. In adapting to the pandemic, we are all having to gather bits and pieces from our old lives, then transform and rearrange them in unexpected ways. 

Please let me know your thoughts on the new collection, and enjoy! 

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“what remains” is 8 x 10, made of paper, acrylic paint, and adhesive on illustration board. © Annette Makino 2020. The haiku was originally published in With Cherries On Top, Press Here (2012).

Makino Studios News

Seabeck Haiku Getaway: I will be giving a reading of my haiku and presenting my new collage haiga (art with haiku) at this annual gathering, which is being held on Zoom this year. This free event takes place Oct. 31-Nov. 1. Registration is full but you can sign up for the Seabeck waiting list; the organizers hope to make room for more participants.

Made in Humboldt fair: You can find my calendars, prints and boxed notecards at the “Made in Humboldt” event at Pierson Garden Shop in Eureka, CA from Tuesday, Nov. 10 through Tuesday, Dec. 24. This will be the only fair where you can find my work this season, as the annual holiday fairs at the Arcata Community Center and Redwood Acres are canceled. My cards and calendars are also available in select stores.

Big changes in the studio

“telephone pole” is 8 x 10, made of paper, acrylic paint and adhesive on illustration board with the words digitally added. The haiku was first published in A Moment’s Longing, Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology, 2019, Ed. Tanya MacDonald.

With business slowed by the pandemic and time on my hands during these long months of sheltering in place, I have been up to something big in my studio. To be honest, I have felt shy about sharing it while my new work is in the process of being born. That’s why I haven’t written in some months.

But the baby has taken its first breath, so here goes. After ten years of painting with sumi ink and Japanese watercolors, I have set that approach aside to develop a whole new style of art. I have begun making collages from hand-painted and torn washi papers, sometimes combined with old letters, book pages, maps and other found papers. These collages draw inspiration from the natural landscapes of Northern California and from my Japanese heritage.

Although they can take just as long to create as my paintings, these days I am having more fun with collages and finding them to be very rich emotionally. For instance, the woodpecker collage shown here incorporates bits of an airmail envelope from my late grandmother, a score from my old choir and pages of Moby-Dick with my daughter’s high school notes in the margin. 

Traditional Japanese washi papers are made from the inner bark of mulberry bushes and other plants. The papers I use start out white, often with embedded organic bits such as fiber threads and leaves. In a technique I learned from Washington artist Donna Watson, I mix my own colors and apply paint to the backs of the sheets using a brayer. This way, the colors bleed through but the textured bits and any printed patterns are still visible. 

I also embellish grocery lists, canceled checks and discarded sumi ink paintings. In the alchemy of collage, every aspect of life can be transformed into something rich and beautiful.

These new collages will form the basis of my 2021 calendar of art and haiku. I’ll let you know when they’re available, hopefully next month. At that point you’ll also be able to view more examples of this new work.

I am still deciding whether to create card versions of these designs, with card-appropriate words rather than haiku. I would love to get your honest opinion on whether people would buy these, even (especially) if you think they would not hold much appeal. 

With this new collage art in its infancy, I am still working out how to piece it all together, literally and figuratively. I deeply appreciate your support for my work to date and I look forward to your frank feedback on this new direction.

warmly, Annette

P.S. I will continue to offer my most popular watercolor card designs while gradually phasing out the slower sellers. That means supplies of some card designs are limited; everything I’ve got is for sale on my Makino Studios website.

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“mountain switchbacks” is 8 x 10, made of paper, acrylic paint and adhesive on illustration board with the words digitally added. © Annette Makino 2020. The haiku was first published in Acorn, Number 43, Fall 2019.

Makino Studios News

Best of Humboldt: Thanks to everyone who voted for me for Best Local Artist in the North Coast Journal’s annual Best of Humboldt contest! I'm pleased to be a finalist (2nd place), especially in a county with so many talented artists.

Seabeck Haiku Getaway: I will be giving a reading of my haiku and presenting my new collage haiga (art with haiku) at this annual gathering, which is being held on Zoom Oct. 31-Nov. 1 this year. Registration is full but you can still sign up for the waiting list.

Canceled Humboldt events: The North Country Fair, normally held in late September, is canceled this year, as are the annual holiday fairs at the Arcata Community Center and Redwood Acres. You can still find my paintings, prints and cards online here; my cards are also available in select stores.

Eastward ho!

“mountain meadow” is 11×14, painted with sumi ink and Japanese watercolors on paper. © Annette Makino 2015

At the Seabeck Haiku Getaway in Washington last fall, we started with a fun icebreaker: write down five items from your bucket list, then walk around the room and share with other participants. (For more about Seabeck, see The path unfolds.)

After the exercise, my daughter Maya and I compared lists. I definitely don’t share her dream of working a stint as a bartender! But it turns out that we both had the exact same number one wish: to travel to Japan as a family.

Meanwhile, Makino Studios turned five years old in March. Thinking about how to mark this milestone, I remembered the bucket list exercise. It occurred to me that the best way to celebrate would be to use some of my earnings to take our family to Japan. How fitting that a business that draws deeply from the traditions of Japanese art and haiku would enable us to travel there.

So we are off early next month for three weeks of exploration and adventure! This will be the first trip to Japan for our teens; it is the fourth trip for me and the second for my husband Paul. My sister Yoshi will join us for the first and last few days of the trip.

Our itinerary includes visiting Japanese relatives in Tokyo and touring the venerable 320-year old Makino sake factory in Takasaki. We’ll also see the Makino temple and a cemetery there containing family tombs from ten generations.

My mother, sisters and I (standing, left) wear kimonos sent from Japan by my grandparents. (Santa Monica, California, 1969.)

I’m also excited to hike along the ancient Nakasendo trail in the Japanese alps, where stone tablets commemorate visits by revered haiku poets Basho and Shiki. We will soak in hot springs and explore Japanese temples, gardens, castles, and museums.

To experience Japanese life more deeply, we will mainly stay in ryokan (traditional Japanese inns) and a variety of homes booked through Airbnb. As lovers of Japanese cuisine, we are especially excited about the food! I imagine I’ll find much artistic inspiration throughout.

While the earnings from my art business are modest, the psychic rewards are incalculable. (I just don’t think I’d feel the same about bartending.) To all my store buyers, customers and supporters over the past five years, I bow in thanks.

salt breeze
all the countries
on my bucket list

warmly, Annette Makino

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Makino Studios News

ukiaHaiku Awards: At the ukiaHaiku Festival on April 24, this poem of mine won second place in the Jane Reichhold International Prize, out of 412 entries from six continents:

unconcerned
with divorce rates
mating butterflies

And this one took third in the Dori Anderson Prize for haiku about Ukiah:

a row of raindrops
hanging on the clothesline—
manzanita blossoms

Newest stores: The list of Makino Studios card retailers now includes Down to Earth in Eugene, Oregon; Three Sisters in Ukiah; and Swish Healdsburg in Healdsburg, California. If there is no store in your area, you can order online through my Etsy shop.

Order by June 1: As I’ll be traveling in Japan, I will not be able to fill online or store orders between June 2 and June 28.

Connecting: I appreciate the kind responses to my last post, on International Haiku Day. You can get news, fresh art and haiku on my Makino Studios Facebook page and my Twitter feed.

Publication credit: “salt breeze” was published in Exhaling, the Seabeck 2015 anthology; it tied for second place in the Seabeck kukai (a haiku contest determined by participating poets).

Lights out

“what remains” is 5×7, painted with sumi ink and Japanese watercolors on textured paper.

My son Gabriel is an unusual kid: while other twelve-year old boys like to play video games, he prefers to watch BBC science documentaries. So much so, in fact, that his dreams have included a narrator with a British accent.

He has matter-of-factly explained to me that the average mammal species lasts about one million years. On a planet more than four billion years old, that’s the blink of an eye. This means that Homo sapiens, the clever species that tamed fire and invented the iPhone, could be gone before we know it.

lights out
we discuss
our extinction

What with all the grocery lists and oil changes of everyday life, it’s easy to lose the grand perspective. But the truth is that for all our striving, even the most influential and famous of our species—President Obama, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey—will be forgotten long before the pebbles on the beach turn to sand.

Yes, there is something sad about all this. Billions of people work hard every day to make it through this life and to leave something of lasting value. Yet in geological time, all this effort will amount to approximately nothing.

At the same time, I find some reassurance in taking the (very) long view. It puts our human insanities in perspective, and enables a sort of Zen detachment from the grim daily headlines. Keeping the big picture in mind helps me find a sense of lightness and acceptance of our predicament.

what remains
of the mountain
sand between my toes

OK, so nothing I can do in my time here will last longer than the flap of a butterfly’s wing. Ultimately, this helps clarify what’s really important. Not money, degrees, titles, or fame. Not even the amazing children my husband and I are raising: in a hundred years, we’ll all be history.

At the risk of sounding too woo-woo, I’ve come to feel that what matters—and what may be the only real and lasting thing—is the energy and intention that we put out in the world as we do our work. Call it spirit. Call it love. And no matter how much time we are given, no matter how long our species survives, let’s make the best of it, and call it good.

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“what remains” was first published as a haiku in With Cherries on Top, Ed. Michael Dylan Welch, Press Here (2012), and reprinted in this world:Haiku Society of America Members' Anthology (2013). The art was first published on Haigaonline (December 2013).

Makino Studios News

Wet Paint: Ten new haiga (haiku paintings) have been posted to the Current Work section of the Gallery on this site.

Red Moon Anthology: The poem below was selected for a just-published collection of the best haiku of 2013, fear of dancing: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2013, edited by Jim Kacian:

cowlick
some part of me
still wild

Annette’s Blog: For previous posts, including this one from June 2012 on Gabriel’s scientific perspectives, see Parallel Universes.

NaHaiWriMo: February is National Haiku Writing Month. Get daily prompts and share your efforts on the NaHaiWriMo Facebook page.