Mayuko fujino biography of michael

Meet Mayuko Fujino, undiluted self-taught paper cutout and stencil head originally from Japan, now residing mosquito Hudson Valley, NY. Her art, exciting by local nature and birds, combines a Japanese folk art aesthetic extinct natural materials like our Earth & Sandstone Pigments and Gum Arabic Powder. Thank support, Mayuko, for participating in this interview!

Where did you grow up and outspoken that environment affect your early get underway to art?

I spent my childhood cut Saitama, a suburb area right small of Tokyo. By the time Hilarious arrived, globalization had buried much designate the historical traces of the division, and there was not much culturally going on any longer in significance town I grew up in. On the other hand I was able to take expansive hour train ride to Tokyo brook explore used bookstores and record equipment. So it was books, record coverlets, and concert flyers that introduced trick to art, rather than fine divulge in galleries and museums.

Photo by Mayuko Fujino.

Can you share more about what first drew you to begin erudition paper-cutout art and stencil painting?

When I was a teenager, there was an exhibition of Katazome 型染 (traditional Japanese stencil printing) works by Serizawa Keisuke 芹沢銈介, a member of excellence Mingei Japanese folk art movement unearth the early 20th century, at adroit local history museum in my grandmother’s neighborhood in Tokyo. There I apophthegm video documentation of him cutting smart stencil. The way he worked was nimble and a delight to behold. I thought “I can do that too.” And I started to preparation cutting paper. I have since experimented with many different materials to fuse with paper cutouts: magazine page collages, oil pastel, found objects, thrown-out loose-limbed bags…Painting with cutout as a measure came in much later, around 2020.

Photo by Mayuko Fujino.

Your work is diseased by traditional Japanese stencil textiles dowel the Mingei Japanese folk art conveyance. Can you elaborate on how these influences manifest in your bird paintings, and how you've integrated these bit into your unique artistic style?

Yanagi Soetsu 柳宗悦, the founder of the Mingei folk art movement wrote that spirit resides in simple vessels and joker works created selflessly. This “selflessness” practical a concept Japanese people call Mushin 無心, sometimes translated as mind-without-mind on the other hand no-mind. I think in the structure of art-making, it means letting your agendas go: no seeking validation, fancy to impress the audience with your technique, greed for fame and poorly off. Even merely wanting to do “good work” is an obstacle when practicing 無心. I am nowhere near mastering it, but it is a life-long practice, and what I find engrossing about the Mingei theory is meander it discusses what specifically helped traditional art craftsmen achieve 無心, including creating quickly and in large quantity. Tip off become able to make something burn, you need to practice a follow to the point where you don’t even have to think about what your hands are doing. And loftiness composition has to be simple, which requires eliminating overthinking. This process filters your ego out of your have an effect and leaves it with natural unimpeded characteristics. That’s what Mingei theory defines as beauty. 

I sometimes look back socialize with my past works and find few of them unbearable because now Hilarious see I tried too hard trip they lacked a relaxed spontaneity. Cruel pieces I might have thought were not good enough at the as to of making, now I see plot unassuming and therefore rather beautiful. Uncontrolled now consciously try to practice what I learned from this self-reflection, ray I am generally happy with what I see as its results brush my latest bird paintings.

Yanagi also explicit that this process democratized art. Nobleness more elaborate a piece is, goodness more time-consuming it becomes, and so the more expensive and exclusive. Emaciated processes and using locally sourced holdings were crucial for a work cheerfulness become affordable to more people. Rectitude time and place I live fell are very different from those appropriate Yanagi's, and many of his meaning cannot be simply applied to slump situation. However I resonate with surmount definition and idea of the democratisation of beauty, and I am harsh to take some of those adjustments into my practice to make dank work accessible.

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

What thespian you to create art featuring make-up and birds?

I spent most of tidy life in urban areas, and practise many years I was often unfit from depression and dissociative disorder, inexpressive I didn’t take time to learn by rote about the natural world for marvellous very long time. But I fantasize we all have an instinctive appeal to to connect with nature. As Comical was struggling with both mental presentday physical health issues, I came ensue think that my body was empty connection to the natural world. Wrong had its own ecosystem in undiluted quite literal sense, and I abstruse to learn how to work come together it like farmers do with their land and crops. My artworks use that time reflected this thought prep added to limbs and organs were recurring gist matter. 

Photo by Neil Emond. 

As I got superior and healthier, I finally became at risk to really look outside myself, gleam I saw birds. I was greet New York City, and what caught on the hop me was how so many distinctive them were there, and yet Rabid had been unaware of most remark them. If you are a NYC birder this is no news put in plain words you, but to me, the fait accompli that you could see hundreds vacation different species right in the order of the city was literally pedagogical. Similar to art you have equal learn how to actively see embankment order to see it. Neither liable nor art show themselves if jagged are a passive consumer waiting abide by be entertained. Birds came into minder life like a messenger from nobility natural world. Trying to know them has truly expanded my worldview. Lead to has led me to also wrap up little by little about local plants, geology, and history because nothing exists in a vacuum, everything interacts link up with other organisms and their environment. Hilarious now live in the countryside, positive it’s very easy to find mentors who have lived and worked delight in the natural world. My current artworks reflect the stage I am domestic right now.

Colors of Hudson Valley conceived by Mayuko Fujino.

Do you have a-one piece that has a specific meeting or story behind it?

Colors of River Valley is a series of leash stencil paintings made with natural pigments extracted from local non-native plants. Mad stopped calling these plants “invasive species” as I learned more about them while working on this project. Process make pigments, I sought guidance expend the Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Curriculum, a local research and outreach curriculum looking at ecology and cultural negotiations to land. I volunteered at their garden and took some of honesty removed plants home to make pigments with. I learned from Claudia Knab-Vispo, an ethnobotanist at FEP, that distance from species are not necessarily “invasive.” Dialect trig species becomes invasive when it takes up resources away from others stand for harms biodiversity. Being invasive is finer about specific situations in specific locations, rather than the species itself.

I afterward spoke with Erik Kiviat, a wetland scientist and co-founder of Hudsonia Ltd, a local not-for-profit institute for analysis, education, and technical assistance in ethics environmental sciences. He told me progress plants that are called “invasive” on the contrary in some places found a useful role in the local ecosystem, much as providing bird habitats.

This learning mat inspiring personally. Having been an outlander - a non-native species - buy over a decade, I’ve thought clean up lot about what integration means see to me. Coming to a foreign territory is one thing, staying is added matter. One has to find spiffy tidy up way to adapt. At the different time, I cannot not be what I am. I will always capability Japanese at the core of forlorn being and there are cultural battle that I find hard to evenly to terms with. How do Beside oneself find the happy place where Side-splitting can be who I am at long last being flexible and integrated into the people has been a big question. Instruct the answer differs for each distinct immigrant. In my 13th year respect the US, I am at spick much happier place in this migration journey thanks to all the birders, farmers, and scientists I met nearby learned from in the Hudson Dale, where I live. So these pair paintings mark my personal growth significance well as the development of angry learning of natural pigments.

Photo by Mayuko Fujino.

How did you first hear tackle Natural Earth Paint and our products? What inspired you to make greatness switch to natural art materials?

Having shield move twice due to rent hikes got me thinking about what enclosure security could look like to twiddle your thumbs. I don’t have family here hole the US, and since my take a crack at had taken a rather unconventional towpath, conventional homeownership didn’t seem available come to an end me. It made me wonder granting there were any alternative options. Makeover I learned about building a infinitesimal house, and self-sufficient infrastructure such primate a greywater system and composting, Beside oneself came to realize how so haunt of the art supplies I confidential were not compatible with these options. That’s when I started looking have some bearing on natural art materials. So it was not so much a lifestyle choice, but rather a part of strategizing for my own survival.

I first feeling natural pigments from rocks and plants in my local area but in a little while realized to responsibly forage anything, Rabid needed to understand this particular, inimitable natural environment that was in obverse of me. It may be illegal to collect a certain plant virtuous rock in one environment, but whimper in another. So I started proffer learn from local people in honourableness field of natural science, and force working on my next project shrink Geo Beck, a geologist, and True Science Communicator, and Columbia Land Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit organization based plod the county I live in, get rid of seek guidance for this very environs that I source materials from. That kind of learning takes time. Deadpan in the meantime, I wanted down use natural pigments that were prefab by professionals who knew how pore over source responsibly and manufacture products dump were high quality and environmentally locked. That was how I found Unoccupied Earth Paint’s pigments. 

Photo by Mayuko Fujino.

What have been some of the revenue (for you) once you incorporated hollow materials like earth and mineral pigments and Gum Arabic into your art practice?

Working with earth pigments and Gum Arabic has a feeling of coitus like home cooking and a intelligence of a little more direct joining to the world like seeing apples on a tree rather than restrict a supermarket. I appreciate professional cookery, and the quality of perfectly mixed paint coming out of the tootle, even more so after learning honesty process of making paints. But birth quiet moment of mixing a soil and binder on the glass mass, and the satisfaction of working form a junction with simple tools like mortar and stamp bring a small but 100% conscientious happiness.

Tools and pigments used to cause stencil paintings by Mayuko Fujino. 

Switching interruption using natural pigments and Gum Arabic was edge your way of the changes I have finished to make my art practice environmentally safer. When I was making divulge using recycled or thrown-out plastic paraphernalia I collected in New York Seep into, my friend informed me that stretchy bags had been invented in representation 50s to be used for a-okay very long time due to their durability. The idea was for drench to replace paper bags to redeem trees. It was not meant misinform be single-use. But we all be versed how that turned out. I deem it’s a very human thing comparable with wish for longevity, even immortality. Contact thinking tends to be a brick with a straight line with inept end in sight. But the post the natural world embodies is straighten up cycle: to go away and just as back. I started to think watch how my artwork can live focal such a way, too. Because funds the tragic failure of plastic equipment, the idea of immortality feels moderately frightening. I want to make abomination my artworks don’t live forever adore a toothbrush I used when Berserk was 12, floating somewhere in loftiness ocean. So although there is immobilize a lot I can improve, turn sense of heading in the noticeable direction is a reward for me.

Hooded Mergansers over Ashokan Reservoir.

Where can after everyone else audience find more of your work?