What we've survived

“bright green needles” is 8x10 and is available as a greeting card. © Annette Makino 2021

Well, it feels like we are finally turning the corner on the COVID-19 pandemic. My family is fully vaccinated, along with 40% of Americans, and I feel an expanding sense of relief. 

My husband, son and I took advantage of our newfound freedom by driving to San Francisco last week. I have been craving artistic inspiration, so we hit two museums and two galleries in three days. We also visited the Japanese Tea Garden, the new Salesforce Park, Chinatown, North Beach and the scruffy, artsy SoMA neighborhood, walking eight to ten miles every day. 

San Francisco
steep streets spilling
into the bay

It was rejuvenating to leave home for the first non-essential trip in fourteen months, and to experience the energy of urban life. Outside many restaurants, pleasant outdoor booths line the streets in place of parked cars. Some eateries offer customers QR codes to snap with their phones instead of touching old-fashioned paper menus.

city maze
falling in love with
the GPS man

But we were shocked to see how hard the city has been hit by the pandemic. Whole blocks of Chinatown are mostly shuttered and many restaurants have gone under. Even big national chains in prime spots have closed, like the giant Uniqlo and Gap stores near Union Square. The tourists are slowly starting to return, but it could take a long time for downtown to recover. 

Back home, we are not out of the woods. Though Humboldt County fared well earlier in the pandemic, now with the spread of the more contagious B.1.1.7 variant, we have the worst COVID-19 case rates of all 58 California counties. The deaths and lingering side effects will haunt us for a long time, as well as the lost livelihoods and failed dreams of this brutal past year.

With all this in mind, I created the above collage haiga (art plus haiku). I used hand-painted and torn Japanese papers, sumi ink, prints made from ferns and redwood sprigs, and vintage Japanese letters from the 1920s. Though our scars may not always be visible, we have each come through a lot to get here. This  piece honors that struggle and the process of growth, and is meant to evoke a sense of hope and healing after trauma. 

bright green needles
on the fire-scarred redwood—
what we’ve each survived

Here’s to survival and new growth!

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“kingfisher” is 8x5. This collage of a female Belted Kingfisher was commissioned as the cover for the excellent new Kingfisher haiku journal. Check it out! © Annette Makino 2021

Makino Studios News

“The ultimate affirmation” - The Eureka Times-Standard ran a lovely feature on my Touchstone Award for haiku, including my process of writing poems and creating collages.

“Word and Image: Exploring Modern Haiga” - I will present this session on haiga, or art combined with haiku, together with Linda Papanicolaou, Editor of HaigaOnline, at the Haiku Society of America’s annual conference. This year’s event runs Saturday and Sunday, June 12-13, and is free via Zoom. Anyone can register. From the program:

Annette Makino will first share a brief slide show of some of her watercolor haiga over the past ten years. Her presentation will draw from the first full-length book of her art, called Water and Stone, with publication in Summer 2021. Linda Papanicolaou will then explain approaches to linking and shifting between the words and image in haiga, with examples. For the bulk of the session, participants will try their hands at writing haiku to accompany several provided images. There will be time to share the results of this foray into creating haiga. 

Water and Stone - I am close to finishing my book manuscript! This will feature my fifty favorite watercolor haiga of the past ten years, along with fifteen new haibun (autobiographical prose pieces with haiku). I’m hoping to have it ready in June or July.

Cards - My current card designs, including the new “bright green needles” design above, are available here.

2021 fairs and events - Northcoast Open Studios, which is usually held in late May and early June, will not take place this spring, but may happen in the fall. The North Country Fair on the Arcata Plaza is scheduled to take place Sept. 18-19 this year, if COVID-19 safety permits. 

Thanks - I really appreciate all the kind responses to my last post, “Big news on Haiku Poetry Day.”

Remembering the Great East Japan Earthquake

“when someone you love” is 11×14, painted with sumi ink and Japanese watercolors on paper, and digitally edited. It is available as a sympathy card. © Annette Makino 2016

I’m writing on the fifth anniversary of the devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan. It’s so hard to lose someone you love; multiply that grief by the nearly 16,000 people killed in the 2011 disaster, and the amount of suffering unleashed is overwhelming.

In addition, more than 200,000 people are still displaced from their homes, and the Fukushima nuclear plant continues to dump radioactive water into the sea.

And yet, we are such a resilient species. Japan is busy rebuilding, restoring and recovering.

My husband Paul happens to be in Hiroshima today, chaperoning a group of high school students. He reports that the city has emerged from the horror of the atomic bombing to become a lovely and vibrant place. The people of Hiroshima have transcended the nightmare of the past.

I’m sharing two paintings here. The piece above is a recent painting of an egret flying over a tilted marsh landscape. The words are adapted from a poem I wrote for my father after he died four years ago; he would have been 86 tomorrow. The piece is a close-up and personal portrait of loss. (See On Love and Loss and a Man Named Quantum.)

“May a thousand cranes” is 9×12, painted with ink on rice paper. © Annette Makino 2011

I painted the piece of flying cranes, left, in March 2011, a couple days after the Great East Japan Earthquake. Along with my first-ever blog post, A Prayer for Japan, it interweaves my personal connection to Japan with a prayer for healing and recovery.

warmly, Annette Makino

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Makino Studios News

New card designs: I have been busy painting, and just got eight new card designs back from the printer! You can find them in my Etsy shop or view them in my online gallery. They are also making their way into stores.

Kamome, The Boat of Hope: Two years after the tsunami, a small wooden boat from a high school in Japan washed up in Crescent City, California, about 75 miles north of Arcata. The Extraordinary Voyage of Kamome: A Tsunami Boat Comes Home tells the story of how the boat has linked two communities across the Pacific. Thisbeautifulchildren’s book was written by Lori Dengler and Amya Miller and illustrated by my friend Amy Uyeki.

Japan in June: My family is heading to Japan for three weeks in June! This will be our first trip there together. We are still planning our itinerary, but I am very much looking forward to finding new ideas and inspiration for art and haiku.

I read the news today, oh boy

“rustling leaves” is 5×7, painted with sumi ink and Japanese watercolor on paper. A greeting card version reads, “I’m so glad you were born.”

Is it just my imagination, or is the news worse than usual? In the Middle East, after killing two American journalists, ISIS has just beheaded a British aid worker, and we are sliding deeper into a military campaign that no one really wants. In Africa, Ebola is rampaging virtually unchecked while fear spreads even faster. All around the world, climate change is wreaking havoc, yet our political leaders seem unable to take meaningful action on the most pressing issue of our time, not just for our species but for all others.

It’s enough to make me want to stay in bed with a heaping supply of chocolate.

But instead of succumbing to despair, yesterday I went to the farmers' market on the Arcata Plaza with my family. We heard a great steel drum band play “Happy” while kids and adults danced and hula hooped around the lawn. We bought fresh organic strawberries, peaches, corn, heirloom tomatoes and flowers grown in our area. And we caught up with friends in the warm sunshine.

Every Saturday morning from April through November, the combination of beautiful local produce, live music, and smiling people creates a kind of magic in the heart of our small town—an alchemy of joy.

Heirloom tomatoes at the Arcata farmers’ market.

This is not the stuff of headlines, but markets like this and other examples of people getting together to create something good—PTA meetings and choirs and grange breakfasts—are the antidote to all those dark news stories. This is how we weave the strands of community, week after week, one zucchini at a time. This is how we celebrate our connections to each other and to the land that sustains us. This is how we “poke holes between worlds,” how we build trust and understanding of each other despite our differences.

When my husband and I first traveled to China in 1996, the government-run People’s Daily had a front-page headline one day with this breaking news: “Ethnic Groups Live in Harmony.”

Well, isn’t that nice?

I’m not suggesting that our newspapers should run feel-good propaganda. We need to know what’s really going on out there. But it is helpful to balance out the depressing daily news by focusing on all the things that are going right with our world. In small everyday ways, we can beat back despair and nurture the hope that is the catalyst for action.

Eating farmers' market strawberries with a bar of Green & Black’s dark chocolate helps too.

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Makino Studios News

North Country Fair: Humboldters, come celebrate the fall equinox at the 41st annual North Country Fair on the Arcata Plaza 10-6 this weekend, September 20 and 21. I'll have paintings, prints, cards and calendars at my Makino Studios booth on G Street near 9th.

Two-Woman Show: I’m excited to team up with mixed media artist Amy Uyeki for an art exhibit at the Adorni Center in Eureka, CA during the month of November.

Poetry & Honey 2015 Calendar: My new wall calendar for 2015 is now available in 18 stores and online. This is a 16-month mini-calendar with the month grids for September-December 2014 and 12 pages of art for 2015.

New Stores North and South: Several new stores are now carrying my art cards and calendars. Check out the Japanese Friendship Garden in San Diego; Wild Rivers Market and Del Norte Office Supply, both in Crescent City, CA; and The Crown Jewel in Ashland, OR.