Cherry blossoms for Haiku Poetry Day

“spring fever” is 8x10, made with paper, acrylic paint, pen and glue on cradled wood panel. © Annette Makino 2025

Today, April 17, is Haiku Poetry Day! To celebrate, I’m sharing a piece on a classic haiku theme: cherry blossoms.

Last spring, on a visit to my sister Yoshi’s house, I noticed that her flowering cherry tree was absolutely humming with hundreds of honeybees.

That inspired a haiku:

spring fever
the whole tree
buzzing

At home later, I mixed acrylic paints in the colors I wanted. I then used a gel press to apply the paint to an old typewritten letter, an insurance statement, rice paper embedded with mango leaves, and other specialty papers from Asia.

Using reference photos, I carefully tore the pieces into the desired shapes, then laid them in place on the cradled wood panel.

Next I took a second panel, placed it on top of the first one, and flipped both together. Now the whole collage lay upside down on the spare panel, so that the background pieces—the first ones I needed to glue down—were on top. I then worked my way up to the foreground pieces.

Inspired by the Japanese tradition of haiga (art combined with haiku), I added the haiku to the collage digitally. It is the April art for my 2026 calendar, and I also made a birthday card version, above.

Every spring, I spend some time with a Yoshino cherry tree on our country road, soaking in the delicate beauty of the pale pink blossoms. The experience is joyful with a tinge of heartbreak, knowing how briefly this stage will last.

blossom season
earlier each year
this fleeting world

It’s the impermanence itself that makes these days of peak blossom so precious. The bees certainly seem to know they need to make the most of the moment! Happy spring and happy Haiku Poetry Day.

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Makino Studios News

Annette Makino hangs her “Paper Alchemy” show at the Arcata Library, running through May 2026.

“Paper Alchemy” art show at the library: Thirty of my mixed media collages are now on view at the Arcata Library in Arcata, CA, with an original haiku accompanying most of the pieces. The show runs through May. You’re invited to visit and check out some books, DVDs or a telescope while you’re at it! If you can’t make it, you can explore my online gallery.

“Our Art, Our Story” group show: I also have a piece in this exhibition showcasing Asian and Pacific Islander artists of Humboldt—as does my daughter, Maya Makino! Sponsored by Humboldt Asians and Pacific Islanders (HAPI), the show runs through May 12 at the Redwood Art Association Gallery in Eureka, CA. Join the artists for Arts Alive on Saturday May 2, 6-9 p.m.

Moms and grads: Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 10 and locally, Cal Poly Humboldt’s commencement is Saturday, May 16. I have several card designs for those occasions and dozens more besides, available in the Makino Studios shop and in select stores.

Chinatown book update: As I shared last month, working closely with HAPI under a grant from the California Coastal Commission, I am writing a children’s book about the 1885 expulsion of the Chinese community from Eureka, CA. The story centers on a real girl named Yung and her tuxedo cat, Miu Miu. I’m happy to share that the book has a title! It is Yung Stands Strong: A Story of Expulsion and Resilience. The illustrations by Yukari Mishima are coming along beautifully and the historical background section will be fascinating. We go to press this summer.

Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems: Today the Haiku Foundation announced the five awarded poems in this prestigious annual contest, which my husband has dubbed “the Nobel Prize of haiku.” Congratulations to the winners as well as the poets included in the short and long lists! Big thanks to coordinator Matthew Markworth and my fellow judges, Sarah Paris, Thomas Haynes, Dan Schwerin, and Mary Stevens, who sorted through 1500 poems from 35 countries.

In Basho’s Footsteps: I appreciate everyone who joined my Zoom talk for the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society about my walking tour in Japan last fall! It was fun to relive the trip and show some of my art to an enthusiastic crowd of sixty people. I plan to give a version of the Basho talk at the Seabeck Haiku Getaway in Seabeck, WA in October.

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CREDITS:

“spring fever” (haiga): Contemporary Haibun Online, Haiga Gallery, 21.3, 2025; Contemporary Haibun Volume 20, Red Moon Press, 2025

“blossom season” - Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, Honourable Mention, United States, 2025 Haiku Invitational

News story on my art journey

I’m excited to share that this week’s North Coast Journal includes an in-depth article about my creative path! My thanks to Louisa Rogers for the lively and well-researched column—it’s a great holiday gift to be featured. Happy solstice and season’s greetings to all!

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Makino’s “Garden rosebush,” a collage of book pages, a letter and envelope from the artist’s grandmother, handmade and Japanese washi papers, painted, torn and glued onto birch wood panel.

ART BEAT

Annette Makino’s Life in Collage

LOUISA ROGERS, NORTH COAST JOURNAL, EUREKA, CA, DECEMBER 21, 2023

Annette Makino has been an artist all her life but it wasn't until 2010 that she became interested in incorporating haiku into her artwork. For her birthday that year, her Arcata friend and fellow artist Amy Uyeki gave her a book of senryu, a poetic form structurally similar to haiku but with more humor and a focus on human nature. The poems were written by Uyeki’s Japanese grandmother and accompanied by Uyeki’s art.

“This lovely book set me on my current path,” says Makino, whose father is also Japanese. She started combining her haiku with simple brush paintings, which evolved to Asian-inspired watercolors and then collages. A year later, after leaving her 20-year career as senior vice president for communications at the Arcata-based nonprofit Internews, she launched Makino Studios, offering collages, watercolors, prints, cards and calendars.

Annette Makino. Photo by Maya Makino

Currently she works mostly with collage using hand-painted and torn Japanese washi papers, which are typically made from the fibers of the mulberry plant. She also uses other papers from different parts of her life—letters, her young nephew’s scribbles, book pages, musical scores and maps. To make sure the pieces don’t fade over time, she uses acrylic paints to color the white paper, then tears it into the shapes she wants and glues it onto paper or wood, a process that typically takes two to three days. According to Makino, a common misconception is that collage doesn't require much skill. “It’s very labor intensive and can involve as much skill as painting,” she says.

Makino’s most productive periods of artwork happen twice every summer, when she and her husband, Paul, a retired Cal Poly Humboldt geography professor, rent a cabin on the Klamath River in Orleans, a place they've visited for 27 years. In that placid location, free from distractions, she can get a lot of work done.

Makino usually writes the haiku first, before the artwork. “The words aren’t meant to illustrate the art,” she says. “You want a bit of distance, so the reader has a new way to think about the theme.” She often starts crafting the poem while hiking in Ma-le'l Dunes or in Trinidad, where she and Paul walk a couple of times a week.

Makino considers herself equal parts artist and writer. Her book Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku was awarded Honorable Mention in the Haiku Society of America's Merit Book Awards and her poetry regularly appears in English-language haiku journals, including Modern Haiku, Frogpond and The Heron’s Nest. She has also won awards for her poetry from the Haiku Foundation and the Haiku Society of America.

Annette Makino’s “All that I am” incorporates book pages, a fern print, a vintage Japanese letter and washi paper, as well as asemic, or made-up, writing by her nephew.

Many of Makino’s haiku have to do with transitions. A few years ago, for example, when her two young adult children started the process of leaving home, she wrote about the empty nest, while the loss of her 16-year-old dog inspired many poems last summer. Her 95-year-old mother Erika, a former Humboldt resident and also a writer and artist, lives three hours away in Mendocino County. Makino visits her about once a month and is keenly aware of her mom’s gradual decline. That, and the earthquake last winter which caused a lot of damage to her home, have inspired her poetry and art. “Whatever life brings me,” she says. 

Makino was one of five local artists granted the 2022 Victor Thomas Jacoby award for “artistic vision and creativity,” provided annually by the Humboldt Area Foundation and Wild Rivers Community Foundation. Winners each received $10,000 to support their work. The award freed her from some of the commercial pressures of running a business and creating mostly marketable art that appeals to the public. Instead, she experimented with mixed media, using materials like charcoal, crayon, ink and pencil in her collages, and exploring oils and cold wax.

North Coast Journal, December 21, 2023

Recently, she’s been incorporating more personally meaningful elements into her collages. Because Paul loves maps, she created a collage for him that included a detailed map of Tibet. Another collage she created with whales incorporated a scrap from her daughter’s high school copy of Moby Dick. For “Garden rosebush,” she says, “I included a letter from my Swiss grandmother when I got married.”

Makino’s Japanese-Swiss ancestry has shaped her creativity. The haiku and Japanese paper may be more apparent to viewers but, “The Swiss, too, are surprisingly very playful in their art and writing,” she says, noting she likes to bring that spirit of play into her work.

Makino’s cards, prints and calendars are available at the Made in Humboldt Fair at Pierson Garden Shop through Dec. 24, and in shops around the county year-round. You can see more of her work at makinostudios.com.

Louisa Rogers (she/her) is a writer, painter and paddleboarder who lives in Eureka and Guanajuato, Mexico.

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Makino Studios News

Made in Humboldt fair: With 300 local vendors, the “Made in Humboldt” event at Pierson Garden Shop in Eureka, CA runs through this Sunday, Dec. 24. There you will find my calendars, books, small prints and boxed notecards.

2024 mini-calendars: I am still shipping out orders through the holidays, especially my calendars of art and haiku! They feature 12 colorful Asian-inspired collages with my original haiku. $12 each.

Free shipping: Earn free shipping on orders for $35 or more; just enter promo code FREESHIP35 at checkout.