Wishing you peaceful holidays

“peace on earth” is 5×7, painted with sumi ink and Japanese watercolor on paper and digitally edited. It is available as a holiday card or small print. © 2014 Annette Makino

Whew. After weeks of holiday madness for my little business, I have just one more in-person event this season, a holiday craft fair in Arcata this weekend.

With this chance to catch my breath, I just want to say a big thank you to all my customers, family and friends. This holiday season and all year, it is a tremendous gift to be able to spend this brief time on earth engaged in truly meaningful work.

the time we are given . . .
sparks rise through darkness
to join the stars

(tinywords 14.2)

Peaceful holidays to you and goodwill to all creatures.

warmly,

Annette Makino

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Makino Studios News

Holiday Craft Market: I will have paintings, prints, cards and calendars for sale at this fair in the Arcata Community Center in Arcata, CA this weekend, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday.

“oak tree” is 11×14, painted with sumi ink and Japanese watercolors on paper. © 2014 Annette Makino

New Oak Tree Print: I just posted a new print of an oak tree in my Etsy shop, where you can also find the latest holiday and everyday card designs and my wall calendar for 2015.

Made in Humboldt: My cards, prints and calendars are on offer at this holiday fair at the Garden Shop of Pierson Building Center in Eureka, CA  through Dec. 24.

Living Room Retrospective: I am one of nine artists featured in this exhibit at MikkiMoves in Eureka. The show runs through January.

Holiday at Mateel Gallery: A few of my paintings, plus cards and calendars, are available at this gallery in Garberville, CA through Dec. 27.

On a wing and a prayer

“you give my heart wings” is 5×7, painted with sumi ink and Japanese watercolors on textured paper.

Yokwe! I am writing from the Marshall Islands, a tiny atoll nation in Micronesia, roughly between Hawaii and the Philippines. If you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry: it’s the fifth least visited country in the world, barely ahead of Somalia. But you have to love a country where the main greeting, “yokwe,” means “hello,” “goodbye,” “love,” and “you are a rainbow.”

I’m here for a couple of weeks to help my sister Yuri adopt a baby boy. It’s an incredible, heart-expanding experience, and right now there is too much to process to be able to write about it. (Not to mention all those time-consuming bottle feedings and diaper changes.)

So for now, having just flown across most of the Pacific, I am sharing this haiku sequence about air travel, along with a couple of paintings about flying. Enjoy!

In Flight

luggage store
I pick up a little more
baggage

airport restroom
the toilet seat
still slightly warm

exit row
trying to remember
how planes stay up

30,000 feet
my thoughts more and more
pedestrian

flying United             feeling disjointed

crowded flight
on screen after screen
solitaire

Modern Haiku 45:1 (Winter-Spring 2014)

warmly, Annette Makino

“body lands safely” is 9×12, painted with sumi ink and watercolors on rice paper. It was published in Contemporary Haibun 13 (April 2013).

Makino Studios News

Hungry Ghosts: Thanks to everyone who came to the opening of this group show! What a fun (and crowded) evening! The exhibit, featuring artists with Asian and Pacific Islander backgrounds, runs through April at the Brenda Tuxford Gallery, upstairs at 325 2nd Street in Eureka, California.

Open Studios: Join silk painter Tina Gleave and me for the first weekend of North Coast Open Studios, May 31 and June 1, at the Samoa Women’s Club in Samoa, California. Also, there is a group show of Open Studios artists with a reception at the Brenda Tuxford Gallery on Saturday, May 3, 6-9 p.m. during Arts Alive.

Portland and Mendocino Stores: Two discerning new businesses are now carrying my cards: Oblation Papers & Press in Portland, Oregon, and The Stanford Inn by the Sea in Mendocino, California.

Traveling: As I am traveling for most of the rest of this month, my Makino Studios Etsy shop will be closed April 5-29. I’m sorry for any inconvenience.

A series of unfortunate events

“merry & bright” is available as a print or card. It is based on an original 11×14 painting in sumi ink and Japanese watercolors on rice paper.

It was a very trying couple of weeks. The first thing to go wrong was that mice invaded our kitchen and bathroom, leaving their droppings in most of our drawers and cabinets. Just days after I finished cleaning and sterilizing everything from that episode, the dog did his business on the driveway, my husband stepped in it wearing hiking boots, and voilà— a trail all through the downstairs that even a human could track by smell.

After cleaning the evidence off the carpets and floors, I updated some software for my website—and much of the sidebar text disappeared. I naively thought it would be simple to restore it from the nightly backup, but my web guy said that what with the reconfiguring and testing, it would actually be faster for me to recreate the content. There went another big chunk of the day.

Next up, my digital security service notified me that my Gmail account had been compromised. As advised, I dutifully changed the password. But this foiled only me, as the account could then receive email, but no longer send.

A couple days later, the front door permanently locked while open. We spent 24 hours with blankets draped over the top and side of the door to keep out the chill until a locksmith came to replace the failed lock

During this period, I noticed that the house alarm system was indicating a low battery. When I called the company that had installed the system, they had no record of our account

The way my luck was going, it was just par for the course when I picked up the lid of a ceramic butter dish and part of it broke off in my hand.

As each new calamity arose, I got farther and farther behind on my to-do list, just at my busiest time of the year. Instead of painting and framing art, while my husband was off teaching and the kids were at school, I spent many long and tedious hours cleaning and fixing things that I usually take for granted, like front doors that close, email that both sends and receives, and kitchen cabinets where you can safely store food.

“peace on earth” is 5×7, painted in sumi ink and Japanese watercolors on textured paper. It is also available as a print or card.

It was a small mercy that this series of unfortunate events happened just before Thanksgiving. Even while lamenting all the time I was losing, a part of me remembered to be grateful to have a home at all. I told myself that many displaced people—from Syria to the Philippines to downtown Arcata—are facing situations far more dire than a little mouse poop in the silverware drawer.

Beyond that insight, I am not sure what else to take from this run of aggravations, except that sometimes in life, poop happens. Then you just clean it up as best you can and carry on.

With everything running smoothly in our household once more, this past week I found time to paint several new holiday pieces, including the persimmons shown here. I’m now busy catching up and preparing for holiday fairs over the next two weekends.

Who knows what else might go wrong (what is that weird sound coming from the dishwasher?). But the little white Christmas lights are up and the mood here is turning merry and bright. Here’s wishing you delightful and aggravation-free holidays

warmly, Annette

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Makino Studios News

Humboldt Holiday Fairs:

• Humboldt Artisans Crafts and Music Festival at Redwood Acres in Eureka, CA, Friday through Sunday, Dec. 6-8. I’ll be offering new paintings, prints and holiday cards. The Makino Studios booth will be in the sunroom of the Home Economics building.
• Arcata Holiday Crafts Market at the Arcata Community Center, Arcata, CA, Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 14-15.
• Pierson Christmas Fair in Eureka, CA, now through Dec. 24.

Poetry & Honey: My new 2014 wall calendar has been selling much faster than I expected and is currently on its third printing. You can order copies online at my Etsy shop, find them at select Humboldt County stores, or get them at the fairs above.

Holiday Cards: My newest designs can be found in the card section of the Makino Studios Etsy shop.

Arts Alive Holiday Show: Several of my framed prints and cards are in a group show at the Mateel Cooperative Gallery, 773 Redwood Drive, Garberville, CA through December.

New Retailers: I’m happy to share that you can now find a selection of my cards at Eureka Natural Foods (see the special card rack in the center of the candle section), and at St. Joseph’s Hospital Gift Shop, both in Eureka, CA.

Haigaonline Show: Eleven new haiga (haiku art pieces) will be featured in the next issue of Haigaonline, coming in late December.

The spiral path

A few weeks ago, I flew to Washington state for a three-day haiku conference. When I first attended the Seabeck Haiku Gathering a year ago, I was fairly new to the whole world of haiku, and it was very exciting to meet other serious haiku poets for the first time (see Finding My Tribe). This year, the conference deepened and expanded my understanding of this deceptively simple art form. Circling back to the same place a year later, I was also able to see how I have progressed as a poet and artist since then.

I was happy to be invited to do a poetry reading and present a digital slide show of my art, including the seashell painting at the top of this page. Following are a few of the conference activities, followed by my haiku.

The first morning, author and teacher Margaret McGee had us create large spiral labyrinths made of branches, autumn leaves, and oyster shells. She then led us on a contemplative walk into and out of the spirals, and over the weekend we dotted them with our haiku.

spiral labyrinth . . .
still hoping for a shortcut
to enlightenment

Terry Ann Carter, the president of Haiku Canada, led a workshop based on nature essays by Canadian writer and painter Emily Carr.

sleeping naked
all winter long
the maple

Jacqueline Pearce, the author of several historical novels for children and teens, gave a talk called “Time Travel with Haiku,” where we wrote historical haiku as well as “scifaiku” about the imagined future.

earthrise . . .
the world we left behind
so blue

Poet Alice Frampton led the group on a forest hike to the historic Seabeck cemetery, which inspired many poems.

eventually
we all arrive—
graveyard gate

The days were long and full, with some activities running past 11 p.m. I wrote the following haiku at the end of one such day. (It later tied for second place in the kukai, an anonymous haiku contest in which all participants vote on their favorites.)

flannel pajamas
my cell phone also
recharging

There was much more besides, including haiku bingo, a talent show, presentations by haiku poet Marco Fraticelli, and anonymous haiku workshops. On the last day, cartoonist-in-residence Jessica Tremblay of Old Pond Comics delightfully summarized the whole Seabeck gathering in cartoon form.

As with the labyrinths we made, the Seabeck conference left me reflecting that progress is rarely linear. It’s more like a spiral, where we repeat certain actions and experiences over and over, hopefully improving a little bit on each pass. The challenge is to stop looking for shortcuts, take a few breaths, and just enjoy the journey.

My thanks to Seabeck organizers Michael Dylan Welch and Angela Terry of Haiku Northwest for this fun and inspiring gathering, and to all the other participants who made it such a warm and rich experience.

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“listen—the song” is 5" x 7", painted with sumi ink and Japanese watercolors (gansai paint) on heavy textured paper. It is also available as a print or greeting card.

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Makino Studios News

Poetry & Honey: A new 2014 wall calendar features 12 of my paintings. This mini-calendar is now available online and at selected Humboldt County stores.

Humboldt Holiday Fairs: Look for my Makino Studios booth at: •    Humboldt Artisans Crafts and Music Festival at Redwood Acres in Eureka, CA, Dec. 6-8 •    Arcata Holiday Crafts Market at the Arcata Community Center, Arcata, CA, Dec. 14-15 •    Pierson Christmas Fair, Eureka, CA, Nov. 19-Dec. 31

Arts Alive Holiday Show: I will have several pieces in a group show at the Mateel Cooperative Gallery, 773 Redwood Drive, Garberville, CA in December.

The truth about being an artist

I have been having trouble with frogs. Not actual frogs, which I kind of like, in their funny, damp way, but with trying to capture them on paper. To get the image I wanted for the piece shown here, in a long, frustrating process lasting two days, I painted a frog on a lily pad twenty-three times.

Still, each of my paintings fell short in some way. In many there was a problem with the neck, as my 12-year-old, an avid frog-catcher, helpfully pointed out. Others were out of proportion—froggy arms too long for the body, or feet too small. And in a couple, the ink ran in the all-important eyes, ruining the whole piece.

I wasn’t going for anatomical precision—that’s why God invented cameras—but I was still looking for that elusive “aha!” that tells me I’m done.

Exhausted by frogs, I put them away for a couple of weeks, letting the images percolate in my brain. And when I finally got up the gumption to tackle the piece again, I allowed myself to sketch it in pencil first, contrary to traditional Japanese technique.

Aha! Got it.

From the outside, being an artist may seem like a dream job. To have a career that is all about expressing your creativity, to enjoy the freedom of pursuing your passion however you choose, to share your talent with the admiring public, to leave your mark on the world in the most personal of ways . . .

A few of my failed frogs

There is truth to all of that, and I do appreciate the opportunity I have to walk this path. But the dirty little secret about being an artist is that it is also hard. Really hard.

First there is the overwhelming problem of trying to make a living as an artist, which deserves a whole separate discussion. Then there is the fact that—as rewarding as it is to create a successful painting—on any given morning, it is far easier to check email, Facebook, and Twitter, do laundry, or even (shudder) clean the bathroom, than sit down in the studio and paint.

It takes focused concentration and a mind uncluttered by the demands of a to-do list or a tight schedule. That's a tall order right there.

More fundamentally, although my creative vision is usually clear, my technical skills lag behind. In that gap lies self-doubt and frustration—not to mention a whole lot of wasted ink and paper. I’ve been involved with art and graphic design since childhood, yet some part of me still questions whether I can really call myself an artist. If so, would it really take me twenty-three tries to paint a simple frog? And must the whole process involve so much hair pulling?

And yet . . . I know that it's only by reaching beyond our comfort levels and throwing ourselves into the difficult and unknown that we leave open the possibility of grace. In the case of this particular painting, grace takes the form of a meditating frog, distracted by its many wandering thoughts, peeking an eye open.

Is this goofy painting to be part of my legacy to humanity? Well, so be it. Ribbit.

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“in meditation” is 5" x 7", painted with sumi ink and gansai paint (Japanese watercolors) on paper. It is also available as a print or greeting card.

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Makino Studios News

North Country Fair: Humboldt folks, please stop by and say hello at my booth at the 40th annual North Country Fair in Arcata, California this coming weekend, September 21-22, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. The Makino Studios booth will be near the Hot Knots corner on G Street.

Seabeck Haiku Gathering: I will be presenting examples of my haiga (art with haiku) at this fun haiku retreat taking place in Seabeck, Washington October 10-13.

Hello, Oregon: As of this month, the independent bookstore Soundpeace in Ashland is the first retailer in Oregon to carry a selection of my cards.