Pleasures and pitfalls in creating haiga

This haiga by Annette Makino was published in Contemporary Haibun Online in December 2023, and appears in her 2024 calendar of art and haiku. © Annette Makino 2023

ANNETTE MAKINO, HAIKU SOCIETY OF AMERICA NEWSLETTER, DECEMBER 5, 2023

You probably know the satisfaction of writing a well-crafted haiku, when just the right words in the right order create something greater than the sum of its parts. Now imagine that feeling magnified by adding a visual dimension, opening up an extra avenue of creative expression. That is the reward of creating haiga.

You will also find that haiga are more accessible to your cousins, colleagues or others who aren’t particularly interested in haiku. An arresting image combined with a few well-chosen lines of haiku is easy to digest without any knowledge of Japanese poetry. For many years I have published a calendar of my haiga. Sold mainly in grocery stores, bookstores and plant nurseries in my community, these reach hundreds of people each year who have no special connection to haiku, but who find beauty and meaning in the haiga.

“But wait,” I hear you objecting, “I don’t have an artistic bone in my body!” Fear not. In the Japanese tradition, haiga did not require any particular artistic skill. Though there were certainly practitioners who were great artists, like Buson, most haiga images were very modest. The creator’s sincerity and individual expression were key.

Also, with today’s availability of digital photography and photo editing apps, creating variations of haiga is more accessible than ever. (But note the hazards of photo-haiga, below.)

As haiku poets, we have learned that, typically, a key element of an effective haiku is to “mind the gap”—to create some distance between the one-line fragment and the two-line phrase of each poem, enabling readers to make connections themselves. (Of course, some powerful poems break this general guideline.)

The same holds true in the juxtaposition of the image and words in a haiga. Stephen Addiss has written, “In a fine haiga, the poem does not just explain the painting, nor does the painting merely illustrate the poem. Instead, they add layers of meaning to each other.”

However, in my experience, this is easier said than done. If the haiku doesn’t include a strong visual element, it is fairly simple to create some disjunction between the art and text. But if your haiku contains a visual image, as many effective poems do, and if you are using a representational artistic style, it can be hard to find the right distance between the poem and the art. On the one hand, you don’t want to make the connection too obvious; on the other, you don’t want to confound or disengage the viewer.

For instance, in a haiku about a fledgling learning to fly, pictures of birds immediately come to mind. But some other potential visual subjects that offer related but less overt connections might include feathers, fields or clouds. Even paper airplanes!

Correspondingly, if your artistic style is more abstract, it’s easier to create contrast between the text and art even if the haiku features a visual image. For instance, traditional Japanese haiga made of a few semi-abstract brushstrokes allow plenty of space for the viewer to fill in.

I find that many haiga using photos (known as shahai in Japanese) leave me cold; a photo can contain so much visual information that it closes down interpretations of the piece as a whole. But photo-based haiga can be successful if they use more impressionistic images like simple landscapes or extreme closeups. Photos that are manipulated with filters to become somewhat abstracted can also be very effective. And a more detailed photo can still work if the poem shifts away from it enough.

There is a lot involved in crafting haiga; I’ve only touched the surface here. But in the end, I encourage you to create what you want to create. Guidelines can be helpful, but don’t let them limit you. It’s all about the joy of expressing yourself!

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See the gallery of Annette’s haiga.

See her 2024 haiga calendar.

See an essay on linking in haiga by Michael Dylan Welch.

'Torn Together' : Annette Makino debuts new mixed media collages

Pictured is “Wind Blowing Upriver,” a collage piece by artist Annette Makino. (Courtesy of the artist)

HEATHER SHELTON, EUREKA TIMES-STANDARD, EUREKA, CA, SEPT. 2, 2022

Annette Makino has spent the last few years developing a new artistic style. The local artist, well-known for her Makino Studios line of greeting cards, prints and calendars, is now making Asian-inspired collage accompanied by original haiku.

“After 10 years of working with Japanese watercolors and sumi ink, and making fairly representational paintings, I was interested in exploring something new,” Makino said. “I did some online searches for Japanese mixed media and came upon a few collages that spoke to me. It turned out that one of the artists I really liked, Donna Watson, was giving a three-day workshop called ‘Wabi Sabi: The Spirit of Collage.’”

In February 2020, Makino flew to Tucson for that workshop, which she said was quite inspiring.

“Just a month later, the pandemic shut down life as we knew it and my Makino Studios art business slowed to a trickle,” Makino said. “Though stressful, this gave me the unexpected gift of free time, and less pressure to continue to create work in the style that my customers had come to expect. So, I was able to throw myself into experimenting with collage, with the Tucson workshop as a starting point.”

Makino’s new collage pieces are on display in September in a solo show, “Torn Together,” at Just My Type Letterpress Paperie, 235 F St., Eureka. An Arts Alive! reception is set for Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m. (Masks are strongly encouraged inside the store.)

“This is my first show in four years, and I’m excited to share my new work with the community,” Makino said. “I love the process of gathering interesting papers, painting and tearing them and transforming them into beautiful natural scenes.

“Nature … is a constant source of inspiration,” she said. “I especially love the landscapes and animals of Northern California, especially Humboldt County. I have created collages featuring Roosevelt elk, Coho salmon, foxes and owls, among other creatures. You’ll also find ocean scenes, redwood forests, oak trees and blackberry vines.”

Makino says because of her Japanese heritage and having spent time in Japan as a child and later in life, the Japanese aesthetic really speaks to her at a deep level.

“I say my work is Asian-inspired for several reasons. It includes washi papers from Japan and Thailand and other found papers from Japan, like vintage handwritten letters or postage stamps,” she said. “Some of my subjects are traditionally Japanese, like cherry blossoms, a red bridge or paper lanterns. Each piece is finished with my red name seal. And I write a haiku that either accompanies each piece or is placed right on the art, following a traditional Japanese art form called haiga.”

In collage, she said, the most time-consuming part of the work is actually creating the papers.

“All of my papers start out white, and I then paint, print or otherwise embellish them using lightfast acrylics,” artist Annette Makino said. Here is some of the paper used in her collage, “Wind Blowing Upriver,” which depicts the Trinity River. (Courtesy of the artist)

“All of my papers start out white, and I then paint, print or otherwise embellish them using lightfast acrylics,” Makino said. “Any given sheet might have several layers of color and pattern. I use rice paper, washi paper with embedded organic bits, old letters, maps, book pages, canceled checks and even junk mail.

“Some of my tools are brayers, gel press plates, and brushes,” she said. “I make prints from objects like leaves, paper towel rolls or crinkled tin foil. Occasionally, I’ll incorporate some crayon, charcoal, pencil or ink. I’ve also made pieces that include found objects like feathers, willow buds or buttons.”

Once she has all of her papers ready, Makino says she carefully tears them into the desired shapes and glues them together to create her artwork.

“There is a lot of trial and error in this phase,” said Makino, adding that each collage gets mounted on a cradled birch wood panel.

In addition to her new collage work, Makino is still producing cards, and has 10 new designs coming off the press in a couple weeks.

“I choose a few collages that I think could be successful as cards — in some cases I tweak the art — and then I come up with words suited to occasions like birthdays or condolences,” said Makino, whose book, “Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku,” was recently honored in the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Awards.

For more information, go to makinostudios.com.