Interesting times

“trust that the future” is 8x10, made of paper, acrylic paint, and adhesive on illustration board. It is available as a greeting card. A haiku version appears in my 2021 calendar. © Annette Makino 2020.

What an intense and stressful time we're living through: a fraught election, a worsening pandemic, economic distress, racial unrest and climate-driven disasters, just for starters. The year 2020 embodies the ancient curse, “may you live in interesting times.” 

Long-term, I honestly don't know if we will get through this as a species, especially at the rate we’re destroying our home planet and its climate.

lights out—
we discuss
our extinction

But just days before the end of the election, I am finally daring to hope. Massive early voting shows we may be amidst a sea change, a shift away from the politics of hate and divisiveness.

Voting in staggering numbers, young people especially are giving me hope. The three young folks in my house are closely tracking the election news and urging their social media followers to vote. My daughter and I have written several hundred letters and postcards to voters.

Meanwhile, when the stress becomes overwhelming, I try to take my own advice in the card shown above, part of my new collage series:

trust that the future
is already unfolding
from long-planted seeds

And if the election goes badly for us, we can always emulate the migrating birds:

campaign season
geese practice leaving
the country

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“lights out” was first published in Acorn, No. 45, Fall 2020

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Makino Studios News

NEW: Holiday notecards: I’ve made boxed sets of holiday notecards from three of my new collage designs. There are eight cards and eight kraft envelopes per box. These cards are also available as single 5x7 cards.

NEW: 2021 mini-calendar: My new calendars of art and haiku are now available online and in select local stores! They feature 12 of my new collages with original haiku. These make great holiday gifts!

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.

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 this weekend, Oct. 30-Nov. 1. Registration is now open to everyone.

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.

Turn, turn, turn

"mouth of the river" is 11x14, painted with Japanese watercolors and sumi ink on paper. Based on a view of Moonstone Beach in Trinidad, CA, it is one of the new pieces in my 2019 calendar. You can see the piece in process below. A greeting card version reads, "infinite thanks." © Annette Makino 2018

Over the past couple of weeks, our family has completely shifted over to school mode. We now have a senior in high school, a senior in college, and a senior in the Over Sixty program at Humboldt State. Instead of lazy mornings, we dash out the door with shoes untied and breakfast in hand.

Meanwhile, nighttime temperatures have dropped into the 40s and the first maple trees are already changing color. It’s hard to say goodbye to summer, but there’s no ignoring the evidence: autumn is coming.

tilted axis
        we slide
                into fall

In the seven years that I’ve been running my art business, a seasonal rhythm has emerged there too. There is the joyful madness of the holiday season. This is followed by the January grind of inventory and accounting, a perfect combination of tedium and frustration. 

year-end accounting
the cat coughs up
another hairball

Spring means creating a new collection of designs and experimenting with some new products. Summer is a juicy, expansive time when I relax at the river with my family and go on week-long painting retreats. 

mouth of the river
an ever-changing story
told to the sea

And September is harvest season, when my best of recent work comes together in the form of a mini-calendar of art and haiku. It’s so satisfying to hold in my hand the culmination of the work I’ve done over the past twelve months, and to know it will bring pleasure to hundreds of others through the coming year.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

With experience, now I know that seemingly fallow weeks will alternate with intensely productive periods. I know that once I survive the dreaded year-end accounting, I will get to create again. And that art-wise, the bittersweet end of the summer means the reward of “bringing in the harvest." So let me be the first to wish you a happy fall equinox!

revolving door
that autumn leaf
comes round again

("revolving door" is part of "Passages," a haiku rengay written with Bill Waters and published in Hedgerow #121, Autumn 2017.)

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Makino Studios News

North Country Fair: The North Country Fair takes place in Arcata, California the weekend of Sept. 15-16, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days. This festive event features 170 art and craft booths, local food, three stages of live entertainment and two parades. I’ll have my newest work at the Makino Studios booth on G Street, plus a free raffle for store credit.

Fieldbrook Art & Wine Festival: Makino Studios will have a booth at this lovely event at the Fieldbrook Winery in Fieldbrook, California on Saturday, Sept. 29, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

New paintings and prints: Check out my latest paintings in the Gallery. And see the new signed art prints in the Prints section.

Sneak preview of 2019 calendar: You can see a few images of my mini-calendar of art and haiku online here. Orders will be shipped out the week of Sept. 17.  

Welcome to the eternal now

"foamy surf" is 11x14, painted with sumi ink and Japanese watercolors on paper. It depicts the Lost Coast in Humboldt County, California.

Recently I spent a long, boring week in bed with the flu. When not sleeping, reading, or writing whiny haiku about being sick, I did some musing on the nature of time. 

There are so many ways that we fight with time. In the short term, like most modern-day humans, I often feel that there is not enough time in the day to do everything I want to do, like paint. So it was frustrating to be bedridden for days, with too much time on my hands but not enough energy to do anything with it!

In the long term, as I get older, I feel a keener awareness of my limited time here on earth, and my finite window to contribute to the world. This, too, can lead to frustration that I am not accomplishing more.

Time can also seem like an enemy because we only experience it flowing in one direction. As a result, it’s natural to compare the present with the concrete and specific past that we clearly remember rather than the misty, unknown future. 

And so we focus more on aging and loss: the slim waistline and the full, dark hair we once took for granted, the steel-trap memory grown rusty, the friends who have passed on. Why not focus instead on the fact that we are probably healthier, sharper, and more energetic today than we will be down the line?

"celebrate" is 5x7, an image of cherry blossoms painted with sumi ink and watercolors on paper.

celebrate!
you’re younger now
than you’ll ever be

What if, as in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, we aged in reverse? Would we be more enthusiastic about growing “older” if it meant becoming more youthful? Yes, eventually there are diapers, mushy food and babbling at both ends of life. But for some reason this is adorable in toddlers, embarrassing in the old.

Anyhow, Benjamin Button is a work of fiction. As Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” 

Maybe we would be happier if we fully grasped the discovery from quantum physics that time is malleable and relative. What if time does not exist in any fundamental sense except as a useful conceptual tool for navigating our world? To quote sci fi writer Ray Cummings, “time is what keeps everything from happening at once.”

Although none of us are evolved enough to transcend time permanently (is that what death is?), we have all experienced the state of “flow” when we lose awareness of the passage of time. It might be while surfing, reading a great book, or playing music with friends. When I am painting—a right-brain activity—I’m focused on color and form, and the hours flow by uncounted.

Paradoxically, perhaps we would feel we had “enough time” if we spent more of our days in this mode beyond time, when we are fully present and engaged in each moment. It shouldn't be that hard to do: as young children, we passed most of the day in this state, fully immersed in exploration and play. 

On my way to the beach, I often hike by some cement water tanks that have been covered in graffiti for years. Today I was tickled to see that a county worker had painted it all out except this one line: “Welcome to the eternal now.”

foamy surf
rushing out
my inner child

Zen graffiti on a water tank at Ma-le'l Dunes in Manila, California.

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Makino Studios

2018 Golden Haiku Competition: I’m delighted to share that the haiku below was selected to be featured on a sign in downtown Washington, DC this month! If any of my DC readers sees it, in the Golden Triangle neighborhood between the White House and Dupont Circle, please send me a photo!

North Coast Open Studios: Mark your calendar for the 20th anniversary of this fun, free event, when more than a hundred Humboldt County artists open their studios to the public. I will once again join silk painter Tina Gleave and other artists at the Samoa Women’s Club in Samoa, CA for Weekend 1, June 2-3. 

More thoughts on aging: A 2013 blog post, “Younger than we’ll ever be,” uses prose, art, and haiku to explore the theme of coming to terms with getting older.