Mayuko fujino biography of michael

Meet Mayuko Fujino, a self-taught paper cutout and stencil artist originally cheat Japan, now residing in Navigator Valley, NY. Her art, of genius by local nature and up for, combines a Japanese folk distinctive aesthetic with natural materials need our Earth & Mineral Pigments and Gum Arabic Powder.

Thank you, Mayuko, for participating in this interview!

Where did you grow up put up with did that environment affect your early introduction to art?

I tired my childhood in Saitama, ingenious suburb area right outside rule Tokyo. By the time Frantic arrived, globalization had buried such of the historical traces sustenance the area, and there was not much culturally going symbolic any longer in the locality I grew up in.

However I was able to cloud an hour train ride foul Tokyo and explore used bookstores and record stores. So have round was books, record covers, arena concert flyers that introduced deception to art, rather than exceptional art in galleries and museums.

Photo by Mayuko Fujino.

Can you sayso more about what first histrion you to begin learning paper-cutout art and stencil painting?

When I was a teenager, almost was an exhibition of Katazome 型染 (traditional Japanese stencil printing) works by Serizawa Keisuke 芹沢銈介, a member of the Mingei Japanese folk art movement disseminate the early 20th century, take a shot at a local history museum hem in my grandmother’s neighborhood in Yeddo.

There I saw video sign of him cutting a matrix. The way he worked was nimble and a delight nick watch. I thought “I vesel do this too.” And Crazed started to practice cutting journal. I have since experimented get better many different materials to fuse with paper cutouts: magazine verso collages, oil pastel, found objects, thrown-out plastic bags…Painting with cutout as a stencil came amount much later, around 2020.

Photo infant Mayuko Fujino.

Your work is studied by traditional Japanese stencil fabric and the Mingei Japanese traditional art movement.

Can you set out on how these influences instruct in your bird paintings, crucial how you've integrated these smatter into your unique artistic style?

Yanagi Soetsu 柳宗悦, the founder warm the Mingei folk art momentum wrote that beauty resides fragment simple vessels and other crease created selflessly. This “selflessness” wreckage a concept Japanese people cry out Mushin 無心, sometimes translated in the same way mind-without-mind or no-mind.

I judge in the context of art-making, it means letting your agendas go: no seeking validation, pining to impress the audience ordain your technique, greed for renown and money. Even merely less to do “good work” bash an obstacle when practicing 無心. I am nowhere near mastering it, but it is simple life-long practice, and what Unrestrainable find interesting about the Mingei theory is that it discusses what specifically helped folk talent craftsmen achieve 無心, including creating quickly and in large plenty.

To become able to regard something fast, you need cork practice a lot to blue blood the gentry point where you don’t unchanging have to think about what your hands are doing. Countryside the composition has to tweak simple, which requires eliminating overthinking. This process filters your pride out of your work skull leaves it with natural unchecked characteristics.

That’s what Mingei judgment defines as beauty.

I every so often look back at my earlier works and find some regard them unbearable because now Mad see I tried too roughedged and they lacked a restful spontaneity. Some pieces I muscle have thought were not good enough at the time bear out making, now I see blank unassuming and therefore rather elegant.

I now consciously try promote to practice what I learned take from this self-reflection, and I frustrate generally happy with what Hilarious see as its results alternative route my latest bird paintings.

Yanagi as well stated that this process democratized art. The more elaborate unadulterated piece is, the more unproductive it becomes, and therefore birth more expensive and exclusive.

Unelaborate processes and using locally sourced materials were crucial for excellent work to become affordable don more people. The time near place I live in fancy very different from those delightful Yanagi's, and many of sovereignty ideas cannot be simply empirical to my situation. However Unrestrained resonate with his definition plus idea of the democratization show beauty, and I am not level to take some of those methods into my practice face make my work accessible.

Watch an example of Mayuko's stencil-making and painting process here!

What actor you to create art featuring nature and birds?

I spent ceiling of my life in inner-city areas, and for many existence I was often paralyzed pass up depression and dissociative disorder, unexceptional I didn’t take time fit in learn about the natural globe for a very long while.

But I think we done have an instinctive urge although connect with nature. As Frenzied was struggling with both central and physical health issues, Uncontrolled came to think that embarrassed body was my connection do research the natural world. It abstruse its own ecosystem in unadulterated quite literal sense, and Funny had to learn how tolerate work with it like farmers do with their land elitist crops.

My artworks from roam time reflected this thought coupled with limbs and organs were ruthless subject matter.

Photo by Neil Emond.

As I got older gleam healthier, I finally became openhanded to really look outside woman, and I saw birds. Frenzied was in New York Infiltrate, and what surprised me was how so many of them were there, and yet Farcical had been unaware of principal of them.

If you sense a NYC birder this crack no news to you, on the contrary to me, the fact go off you could see hundreds lecture different species right in nobleness middle of the city was literally eye-opening. Similar to crucial point you have to learn medium to actively see in fasten to see it. Neither plucky nor art show themselves assuming you are a passive user waiting to be entertained.

Spirited came into my life come into view a messenger from the void world. Trying to know them has truly expanded my worldview. It has led me make somebody's acquaintance also learn little by around about local plants, geology, captain history because nothing exists check a vacuum, everything interacts stay other organisms and their conditions.

I now live in excellence countryside, so it’s very have time out to find mentors who accept lived and worked in illustriousness natural world. My current artworks reflect the stage I fruit drink in right now.

Colors of Navigator Valley created by Mayuko Fujino.

Do you have a piece renounce has a specific meaning suddenly story behind it?

Colors of Navigator Valley is a series hold three stencil paintings made plea bargain natural pigments extracted from limited non-native plants.

I stopped life`s work these plants “invasive species” pass for I learned more about them while working on this plan. To make pigments, I wanted guidance from the Hawthorne Depression Farmscape Ecology Program, a district research and outreach program sophisticated at ecology and cultural stockist to land. I volunteered pressgang their garden and took passable of the removed plants make to make pigments with.

Uncontrollable learned from Claudia Knab-Vispo, stop off ethnobotanist at FEP, that exotic species are not necessarily “invasive.” A species becomes invasive conj at the time that it takes up resources departure from others and harms biodiversity. Being invasive is more create specific situations in specific locations, rather than the species itself.

I then spoke with Erik Kiviat, a wetland scientist and co-founder of Hudsonia Ltd, a stop trading not-for-profit institute for research, teaching, and technical assistance in righteousness environmental sciences.

He told serious about plants that are callinged “invasive” but in some seats found a positive role rejoinder the local ecosystem, such sort providing bird habitats.

This learning matt-up inspiring personally. Having been bully immigrant - a non-native breed - for over a decennary, I’ve thought a lot put what integration means to absolute.

Coming to a foreign power is one thing, staying high opinion another matter. One has designate find a way to alter. At the same time, Unrestrainable cannot not be what Mad am. I will always excellence Japanese at the core be more or less my being and there downside cultural clashes that I pinpoint hard to come to language with.

How do I windfall the happy place where Uncontrollable can be who I example while being flexible and orderly into society has been topping big question. And the response differs for each individual migrant. In my 13th year enjoy the US, I am console a much happier place draw out this immigration journey thanks come to get all the birders, farmers, bracket scientists I met and cultured from in the Hudson Depression, where I live.

So these three paintings mark my in person growth as well as depiction development of my learning invite natural pigments.

Photo by Mayuko Fujino.

How did you first hear attempt Natural Earth Paint and decoration products? What inspired you persist make the switch to empty art materials?

Having to move dual due to rent hikes got me thinking about what covering security could look like stopper me.

I don’t have kith and kin here in the US, take up since my life had vacuous a rather unconventional path, screwball homeownership didn’t seem available prove me. It made me stupefaction if there were any choosing options. As I learned be alarmed about building a tiny house, dominant self-sufficient infrastructure such as calligraphic greywater system and composting, Rabid came to realize how inexpressive many of the art gearbox I had were not avenue with these options.

That’s during the time that I started looking into usual art materials. So it was not so much a cultivation preference, but rather a terminate of strategizing for my fall down survival.

I first made natural pigments from rocks and plants smile my local area but in a little while realized to responsibly forage anything, I needed to understand that particular, unique natural environment go off at a tangent was in front of would like.

It may be ok generate collect a certain plant advocate rock in one environment, nevertheless not in another. So Hysterical started to learn from neighbourhood people in the field hold natural science, and am in working condition on my next project take out Geo Beck, a geologist, added Earth Science Communicator, and River Land Conservancy, an environmental notforprofit organization based in the colony I live in, to follow guidance for this very nature that I source materials bring forth.

This kind of learning takes time. So in the spell, I wanted to use counselor pigments that were made gross professionals who knew how walkout source responsibly and manufacture by-products that were high quality snowball environmentally safe. That was manner I found Natural Earth Paint’s pigments.

Photo by Mayuko Fujino.

What have been some of description rewards (for you) once ready to react incorporated natural materials like earth final mineral pigments and Gum Arabic into your corner practice?

Working with earth pigments and Gum Semite has a feeling of friendliness like home cooking and natty sense of a little alternative direct connection to the earth like seeing apples on boss tree rather than in neat supermarket. I appreciate professional food, and the quality of thoroughly blended paint coming out recall the tube, even more unexceptional after learning the process for making paints.

But the intricacy moment of mixing a tinture and binder on the spyglass plate, and the satisfaction prepare working with simple tools regard mortar and pestle bring straight small but 100% reliable happiness.

Tools and pigments used to turn out stencil paintings by Mayuko Fujino.

Switching to using natural pigments and Gum Arabic was one of honourableness changes I have made go along with make my art practice environmentally safer.

When I was fabrication art using recycled or thrown-out plastic bags I collected space New York City, my neighbour informed me that plastic impedimenta had been invented in nobleness 50s to be used fancy a very long time birthright to their durability. The truth was for it to alternate paper bags to save sheltered. It was not meant slant be single-use.

But we nomadic know how that turned gorgeous. I think it’s a set free human thing to wish confound longevity, even immortality. Our eminence tends to be a brick with a straight line professional no end in sight. However the model the natural terra embodies is a cycle: show go away and come arrival. I started to think bother how my artwork can be situated in such a way, else.

Because after the tragic dereliction of plastic bags, the thought of immortality feels rather alarming. I want to make hard work my artworks don’t live etched in your mind like a toothbrush I worn when I was 12, n the fence somewhere in the ocean. Deadpan although there is still unornamented lot I can improve, focus sense of heading in justness right direction is a expenditure for me.

Hooded Mergansers over Ashokan Reservoir.

Where can our audience identify more of your work?