Sample pages from Annette Makino’s 2026 calendar of art and haiku
LEO DAVID, MAD RIVER UNION, ARCATA, CA, SEPT. 3, 2026
If you’re from Humboldt, you might have received a Makino Studios original card at one point or another.
Annette Makino’s combination of mixed-media collage and haiku is inspired by the Japanese tradition of “haiga” where the words and image combine to add depth to each aspect.
The joyful and reverent artwork of her cards have marked special occasions for many of us.
Each year she also releases a wall calendar featuring her work – making the everyday an occasion for reflection and celebration.
I spoke with her about the upcoming calendar and the origins of this yearly tradition as well as some commonly held misconceptions about the haiku form.
ANOTHER MAKINO PRODUCTION 1980-87 art calendars by Erika, Annette, Yoshi and Yuri Makino
Makino has been releasing a calendar of her own work for 14 years now but fondly recalls a time in her youth when she and her two sisters would make calendars together.
“We just thought it was fun to have it hanging in people’s homes, and it’s still that way now. I like to create art to share … it feels to me like it’s meant to be shared,” she said.
“It might surprise people to know that I actually consider myself more of a writer than an artist,” Makino confided. Her dedication to the form, and the clarity of her style are a testament to this fact.
The haiku form is very fitting for a calendar– she explained that traditionally haikus will include a seasonal reference.
“It might not necessarily be, say, spring or summer, but you kind of can get the gist of the season from the content. Maybe it mentions frost or tax season or Halloween. And in fact, in Japanese haiku, there’s a long tradition of certain words implying certain seasons because if you read a hundred poems that all said the word summer, it would get tedious pretty quickly,” she said.
Makino also shed some light on why the strict rules of haiku we learn in school or through popular culture are not completely accurate. “A lot of haiku now, even in Japanese, don’t necessarily follow the 5-7-5 pattern.” She continued, “This is based on a real misunderstanding of how Japanese and English relate. In Japanese, traditionally their haiku were in a pattern of 5-7-5 “on” or sounds which are not actually the same as syllables. So when you say it needs to be 5-7-5 syllables, it’s actually going to be a lot longer in English than it would be in Japanese.”
She says that there are a lot of other aspects to a haiku that are much more important in determining if it’s a haiku or not. “The most important part, and this is the most difficult to get right, is that a haiku should have two parts. These are often called the fragment and the phrase. It’s not one long sentence, and it’s also not three separate phrases,” she said, clarifying her point with an example. “I just flipped over this year’s calendar, and there’s one that says, ‘Sandal tan/ the summer/ at peak tomato.’ So the fragment is sandal tan, and then the phrase there would be summer at peak tomato.”
She enjoys sharing her work and does not take for granted the fact that people choose to include her art in their daily routines.
“It’s really meaningful for me to be able to share my art and words with the community and hopefully bring a bit of joy and insight and peace to people through their year. It’s an honor to have a place on their wall,” Makino said, reflecting on her annual tradition.
To learn more about her work, read her blog posts about her poetic journeys, order greeting cards and stay tuned about her upcoming calendar, you can visit makinostudios.com.