Stencil Cut & Paint Workshop on May 31 (Hillsdale)

WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE WEEKEND is a weekend festival of hands-on learning, creativity, and community with over 26 workshops and events. For more information, please visit here. I was asked to answer some questions for the Meet the Instructors section of their website, and thought it’s a nice thing to share here as well.

Q&A

What will participants learn in your workshop?

How to cut and paint with stencils, and how to find freedom within limitations. Stenciling is a technique with a lot of constraints, but those constraints can actually be inspiring and liberating.

How did you first get into your craft?

When I was a teenager, a local history museum in my grandmother’s neighborhood in Tokyo held an exhibition of Katazome 型染 (traditional Japanese stencil printing) by Serizawa Keisuke 芹沢銈介, a central figure in the Mingei folk art movement of the early 20th century. I started teaching myself how to make cutout pieces afterward.

What do you love most about teaching workshops?

Learning a skill gives you joy and confidence that nothing can take away. I think it’s important to have that one unshakeable source of joy, no matter what you’re going through. I love being able to help make that happen for others.

What can someone expect to walk away with after your class?

A versatile technique that can be applied not only on paper, but on other materials such as fabric, interior walls, and murals. A stencil and a painting they made themselves. And a feeling of “oh, it’s really not that hard to be creative.”

Can you share a favorite moment from teaching or creating?

Learning from participants’ work. I once taught stenciling to 3rd graders and found myself thinking, “Maybe I should be a little less precise with my cut lines to create more dynamic compositions.”

How would you describe your teaching style?

I’m a product of DIY culture: anti-hierarchy, self-taught, and collaborative, so I’m there to share what I know, but equally interested in learning from participants. I try to create a flat space.

What’s a small tip or insight you wish every beginner knew?

What makes a piece of art beautiful is not your skill level, but honesty. Let your work stand on its own, without self-deprecation or grand statements, but just plainly: this is what I’ve got, this is who I am.

What do you love about working in the Hudson Valley / Roe Jan region?

I love finding inspiration and subjects in the Roe Jan natural landscapes. They are not only beautiful, but shelter threatened species, including the Bobolink, a grassland bird that nests in Roe Jan Park. It’s quite special, and not something any of us should take for granted.

Join us!

Join us as we venture into nature to find simple shapes and transform them into unique stencil designs. Participants will create stencil paintings on paper to take home, using cutting tools with safety guidance provided. All materials are included, and the workshop is suitable for beginners.

Fee: $75 + taxes, all materials included. RSVP here.

Paint Making with Invasive Plants Workshop at Cornell Cooperative Extension Columbia and Greene Counties (Acra, Hudson)

Sunday June 7th (Acra) RSVP here.
Saturday, June 13 (Hudson) RSVP here.

1-3pm. Fee $45, all materials included.

Through mini presentations and hands-on paint-making, workshops introduce participants to bird species on farms and invasive plant management that supports their conservation. Asian invasive plants such as Toringo crabapple and Multiflora rose, collected at Hawthorne Valley Farm with guidance from professionals, are used as teaching materials.

While acknowledging their impact on local ecosystems, participants learn the plants’ names, cultural significance, and uses in Japan. Participants take part in a hands-on session making paint from invasive species, creating a positive relationship with these otherwise harmful plants.

Participants will take home a bottle of plant paint and a list of low-cost, recycled-material options that allow them to continue paint-making independently.

This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrant Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of The Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by CREATE Council on the Arts.

I was blasting this song from 1980 driving to invasive plant removal volunteering at the Berkshire Botanical Garden, thinking it would be a good track to start a set with when I DJ for the reception party of the invasive plant art show that I’m dreaming of.

Hi, everybody!

We are YMO from Tokyo, Japan

We don’t sightsee, we dance!

Now, ‘Tighten Up’ was very popular in Houston, Texas

With Archie Bell & the Drells

Now, we are the number one!

And then it suddenly occurred to me: the last time we were considered invaders wasn’t the Second World War, but when we were called “economic ANIMALS,” a phrase that followed Japan's postwar economic boom, as its exports and investments flooded global markets. Which is what this song was making fun of – the dehumanizing depiction of Japanese people, and the awkwardness of navigating that moment on the world stage.

Back when that country was thriving, metaphors characterized Japan as an “invading force,” or an enemy that resorted to “sneak attack,” and Japanese trade and investment in the United States was described as “war.” Using militaristic language and viewing your “enemy” as a monolithic force that strips individuality seems pretty similar to what I see in the native vs. non-native/invasive plant conversation.

The question is, is that approach truly helpful?

The militaristic mindset can obscure the science of how these plants function in each local natural landscape. According to Dr. Bernd Blossey’s presentation, Invasive Plants as Agents of Change or Symptoms of Other Stressors*, organized by Partners for Climate Action Hudson Valley, there are 4,259 field studies on 104 invasive species, of which 5 species represent 33% of studies. I’m no expert, but that doesn’t sound like we have much data to define what this big group of 'non-native/invasive' plants are doing individually. And yet the war is already declared among some.

He questioned the conventional idea that non-native plants are inherently destructive to ecosystems and advocated for a shift toward evidence-based management and long-term monitoring. The piece of information that most excited the audience: don’t pull Garlic mustard.

I watched another of his presentations, When Doing Nothing is the Best Invasive Plant Management Tool**, to understand more. My crude understanding is that initially Garlic mustard conditions the soil to its advantage in the competition with other plants. But eventually this condition creates microbial communities that are suppressive to Garlic mustard. If you pull it, you may just be getting in the way of that process.

Dr. Blossey also says earthworms make way for Garlic mustard. The plant is taking advantage of a situation that was already in motion. As he puts it: “it’s a follower not a preparer for ecosystems to deteriorate.”

Which brings me to this, from the New York Times, August 28, 1972***:

Japan Fills a Vacuum Regional leaders talk of balancing major-power influence, but they remain wary of the intentions of Moscow and Peking. Europe’s colonial stamp on the region ended symbolically last year when the British withdrew from Singapore. America’s military grip was loosened and its economic energy sapped on the battlefields of Vietnam. And into the vacuum Japan has marched.

I understand the urgency, but to wait and observe, even in dire situations, can be a practical path. Not to neglect, but because there is no shortcut for true understanding. We don't want to act on incomplete information and make things worse, just to get away from fear of losing control and changes to come. The Garlic mustard case suggests exactly that. I think it comes down to this 13th century writing, if you’ll excuse me for being very stereotypically Japanese in quoting it:

The knell of the bells at the Gion temple echoes the impermanence of all things.
The colour of the flowers on its double-trunked tree reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall.
He who is proud is not so for long, like a passing dream on a night in spring.
He who is brave is finally destroyed, to be no more than dust before the wind.

祇園精舍の鐘の声、諸行無常の響きあり。娑羅双樹の花の色、盛者必衰の理をあらはす。驕れる人も久しからず、ただ春の夜の夢のごとし。猛き者もつひにはほろびぬ、ひとへに風の前の塵に同じ。

This is a hard philosophy, especially when your livelihood is at stake. But I do think this centuries-old wisdom is sometimes the right approach: things change, not because they are bad or evil, not necessarily because you TRY, but simply because nothing lasts forever. The anxiety of the “war” mindset prevents you from seeing the reality. Nature is resilient, and it may have better ideas than what you think to be a "solution." Meanwhile, we need to have courage to choose not to live in fear and declare a war, despite the uncertainty, but choose to live with curiosity and patience to all of our fellow beings. If not for the world, for the sake of our own well-being.

*Morning Coffee: Invasive Plants as Agents of Change or Symptoms of Other Stressors by Bernd Blossey, Partners for Climate Action Hudson Valley

**When Doing Nothing is the Best Invasive Plant Management Tool by Bernd Blossey, the New York Invasive Species Research Institute

***Japan Tightens Her Economic Grip On Nations of East and South Asia By James P. Sterba Special to The New York Times Aug. 28, 1972

Additional reference: Lex, Andrea Louise. Japan Bashing and the Image of Japan in the American Press. MS thesis, Iowa State University, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, 1993.

San Jose Scale

I was introduced to San Jose Scale at Rose Hill Farm. In their active stage, they are crawlers, and then they create waxy little bumps on the surface of tree branches and take cover under those bumps. Inside the bark, the branch is stained a reddish-purple color. This is the result of the scales sucking plant juices and injecting a toxin. But the purple color is beautiful, and Kevin and Dallas at the farm thought it might be an interesting thing for me to experiment with.

I know that cochineal has been used historically to produce purple pigment. I don’t know exactly which cochineal, but since these insects are supposedly related, and since they are producing purple inside the branches, it would be very cool if I could make purple out of them!

At home, I sat and shaved the branch bark, and tiny, shiny, translucent fragments covering the bumps fell all over my knees. It was strange to think that underneath my fingers were literally thousands of tiny insects, all still. I had never even imagined such a way of living. Why are there such things as San Jose Scales? But then, why is there such a thing as myself, if you really think about it?

Natural pigments never seem to give me what I imagine from what I can see on the surface. The pigment from the infested branches produced a slightly green-tinted yellow, something I have come to expect from apples. Also, from what I could see in the information online, San Jose scales / crawlers are yellow, unlike the purple cochineal used for dye, so maybe it is their yellow too. I used it to paint the acrobats in the center of this painting.

Maybe I need to collect the crawlers and see what I can extract from the insects themselves, rather than from the infested branches, so I can tell exactly whether this particular yellow comes from the apple or from the insect. But Kevin said he was going to treat the tree, so for the sake of the orchard’s health, hopefully I won’t have a sample any time soon!

The image below is from an article Time for San Jose scale, Nikki Rothwell, Michigan State University Extension, and John Wise, Michigan State University Extension, Department of Entomology - August 21, 2007.

Japanese Honeysuckle’s bright yellow

The pigment produced from Japanese honeysuckle leaves is the yellow of male American goldfinch in spring.

Other colors are from Multiflora rose, Toringo crab apple, Common buckthorn, Japanese barberry, hand-cut and stencil painted on paper, 11x14 inches. This image was created inspired by my interview with David Newman and Spencer Crawford, sharing their insights around holistic land management at Arthur's Point Farm is building habitat, supporting biodiversity, and inviting us all to tend the land.

Related Article

Upcoming Event

Stencil Cut & Paint Workshop at WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE WEEKEND
May 31, 2026, 1pm-3pm at Taconic Ridge Farm (Hillsdale, NY)

Join us as we venture into nature to find simple shapes and transform them into unique stencil designs. Participants will create stencil paintings on paper to take home, using cutting tools with safety guidance provided. All materials are included, and the workshop is suitable for beginners.

Fee: $75 + taxes, all materials included. RSVP here.

WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE WEEKEND is a weekend festival of hands-on learning, creativity, and community with over 26 workshops and events. For more information, please visit here.

Paint Making with Invasive Plants Workshop at Cornell Cooperative Extension Columbia and Greene Counties - ACRA & HUDSON
June 7 & June 13, 2026 1pm- 3pm

Fee $45, all materials included. RSVP here.

When I visited the Berkshire Botanical Garden on April 4th, I saw these strange purple things poking their heads up out of the ground here and there.

Eric, the Director of Horticulture at the garden, told me they were Japanese butterbur. I looked it up and learned it was ふき (Fuki). I grew up eating this, but I had only ever seen it in a grocery store or on a table! It made me think of my mother who would cook it for us when I was a child.

*Update: this plant may actually be Petasites hybridus, European Butterbur, rather than Petasites japonicus which is what I grew up eating - further looking into this.

There were many brown dead stems and leaves from last year lying around the flowers. I looked inside of the stem and extracted some white fiber. Apparently, in Hokkaido (the large island in the north), they produce 富貴紙 (Fukigami), a handmade washi paper. This means the production process has been fully established and can be scaled up successfully. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. I think someone should send someone (or me!) to Hokkaido to learn the skills and bring them back!

The paper is crafted from the skin discarded in the preparation of Fuki for the food market. So I guess people here need to start eating Fuki as well. It’s delicious! I haven’t eaten it forever and can’t wait to try it this summer as well as making paper.

Also, an exciting collaboration with the Berkshire Botanical Garden is happening this year. More on this project in the future.

Japanese barberry in spring

Participated in invasive plant removal at the Buttercup Audubon Sanctuary on April 6th. I worked mostly on Japanese barberry, so that’s the harvest of the day.

But what a prickly plant this is. I get stabbed collecting them, and I get stabbed preparing them for pigment extraction. Is this any way to treat your countrymen?

Yet I’ve come to love the warm gray that Japanese barberry bark yields (shown in the closeup shot of my painting below), so I must keep taking the abuse. It’s been a mystery to me why the inner branches and roots are such bright yellow — almost neon — and yet the color I extract is gray. How the color shifts from one to another in this process reminds me that colors are not separate; they are seamlessly connected, truly a spectrum, and every time I witness for the first time this mysterious transition, from the dye water to the filtering stage, dried up and then ground, I am amazed. It often brings to mind the line “Green is the true color of the sun” from Haruomi Hosono’s 1993 track Laughter Meditation.

I was also struck by how different this plant looks now compared to what I harvested last November. It’s spring, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was very much a “did you get a haircut?” moment. Tiny green leaves are popping out. I noticed two variations in the stems, both close to the ground and similar in thickness, but one is reddish and the other light gray, both different from the dark branches I’d been working with.

I asked Dave Decker, the land steward of New York Audubon, and he told me the reddish one is younger and the other older. I’ve cooked each separately to see if they yield different pigments. The younger one seems to have produced a much darker gray, the other the warm gray I’ve become familiar with. I’m still waiting for them to dry. Everything about this process is endlessly fascinating. I can’t wait to paint with them.

Bright Yellow of Honeysuckle

While birding with the gang at the Drowned Lands Swamp on April 7th, I collected a few Honeysuckle branches along the trail. Thanks to Kathy Schneider in the gang, one of my birding mentors and also a master gardener, I didn’t have to worry about misidentifying plants. The honeysuckle was already starting to leaf out. I meant to experiment with the bark, but since the leaves came with it, I thought, why not experiment with them too? The leaves amounted to 3.6g.

The color the leaves yielded shocked me. It’s SO bright! I had been so used to the muted colors these plants from the winter produce (and coming from eastern Japan, I’m naturally a sucker for muted color palettes). But this yellow feels like truly a color of something forcefully striving to thrive. And I guess of course it is. It came from baby leaves. “Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May” came to mind. I’ve heard that colors from flower petals and leaves are not as lightfast as those yielded from roots and bark. But I will find out.

Upcoming Events

Stencil Cut & Paint Workshop at WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE WEEKEND
May 31, 2026, 1pm-3pm at Taconic Ridge Farm (Hillsdale, NY)

Join us as we venture into nature to find simple shapes and transform them into unique stencil designs. Participants will create stencil paintings on paper to take home, using cutting tools with safety guidance provided. All materials are included, and the workshop is suitable for beginners.

Fee: $75 + taxes, all materials included. RSVP here.

WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE WEEKEND is a weekend festival of hands-on learning, creativity, and community with over 26 workshops and events. For more information, please visit here.

Paint Making with Invasive Plants Workshop at Cornell Cooperative Extension Columbia and Greene Counties - ACRA & HUDSON
June 7 & June 13, 2026 1pm- 3pm

Fee $45, all materials included. RSVP here.

I received an inspiring comment / question from for my previous post For Integration, Against Demonization. I wrote a reply, and then thought it deserves its own post, with some further thoughts.

Have thought about the invasive-species/human-colonizer parallels a lot recently, especially with yellow crazy ants, this is really nice material for reflection! I've wondered if treating humans and nonhumans on more equitable grounds would invest invasive species (especially those as aggressive, organized, and exploitative as yellow crazy ants) with meaningful responsibility for their roles in ecological destruction, and where the implications of that could(/should) end up.

I think demonization and accountability are two different things. Accountability is necessary and must be assessed proportionately and specifically to the damage caused. In the case of a species, that would mean being removed from a particular area because of the concrete harm it causes there. In the case of immigration, people can and should be deported for specific violations of specific laws. A country cannot accept an infinite number of immigrants, especially those who do not comply with the regulations in place.

But as someone who has jumped through the hoops of immigration, my question is: are those regulations truly fair and inclusive, giving outsiders a genuine chance to integrate in a way that is not disruptive to the resident community? Is meeting them with hostility really helpful to what we are trying to achieve? In my experience, the system felt designed to set you up to fail, making compliance so difficult because of the aggressive view that “they are coming for our resources, we need to get rid of them, only keep the ‘right’ ones, however that gets defined” rather than asking: “what conditions would allow coexistence?”

And historically, what was considered ‘right’ was based on human convenience and aesthetic preference, not necessarily on the balance of the landscape. And that is what fascinates me about the indigenous framework (Contribution of Indigenous Peoples’ understandings and relational frameworks to invasive alien species management). It advocates for management that is just and compassionate rather than driven by demonization, with an aim to understand the finer context of each landscape and for the sake of long-term balance. Which does not mean giving anyone a pass for causing harm.

I think if we are going to be so pro-native, we must give the same passionate support to Indigenous-led biodiversity management, just as one would remove invasive plants to create space for a native plant to grow.

I know this framework not only as an idea, but as an experience.

What does demonization look like?

In The Invasiveness of Native Plant People in 2024, Pam Walatka wrote:

• Nativism has taken hold because people who support it are well-intentioned and respectable; nativists sincerely want to help the environment.

• The hatred came before the danger; eucalyptus were never considered dangerous before nativism taught people to hate them.

• The science is not in yet; evidence-based policies are a thing of the future.

During the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, I was in Brooklyn, New York, and I belonged to the population that was considered literally to be a biological threat to the survival of the local ecosystem. Once the president Donald J. Trump called it “Chinese virus”, I started seeing changes in some of my neighbors’ behaviors. They frowned, covered their faces, sometimes crossed the street so they wouldn’t have to pass me. News of people who looked like me being beaten started to flow in. (Anti-Asian American Hate Crimes Spike During the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic). A friend who lived nearby sent me a warning about a man in our neighborhood who did not believe in the pandemic yet was posting on social media about his intention of assaulting Asian women for spreading the virus. I looked at his posts and found out he was ‘patrolling’ the same Dunkin’ Donuts that I frequented.

I felt that I had a tiny glimpse of what the Korean population went through in 1923 Japan (Kantō Massacre), a history that, as a Japanese born, I cannot claim to be apart from. Or the Indigenous population in the US, or the Jewish population under the Nazi regime.

If the virus originated in Asia, by all means research and find out if there was anyone to be held accountable. But how does demonizing and trying to physically remove this particular “species”, one that may or may not be connected to the ecological harm in a specific time and place, help accomplish the goal? Whatever political side you were on, did the president who demonized us help you feel that the country was working together towards the solution, or make you feel reassured?

To me, resisting the normalization of demonization is not “just” a matter of language. I experienced this biological threat framing as part of my own life, and it’s the same logic as invasive species thinking: the organism itself becomes the threat, not necessarily its behavior in specific situations. It is difficult for me to witness extreme language being used to promote Nativism in the natural world — such as “terrorists” and “tumors” by leading figures of the gardening or nature conservation world* — especially in this time of ICE raids we are going through.**

*This topic is explored in depth in this article, with counterarguments to the nativist positions: Seeking Peace in Our Gardens | Conservation Sense and Nonsense, April 1st, 2026.)

** ICE Receives 100,000 Applications from Patriotic Americans Who Want to Help Remove Murderers, Gang Members, Pedophiles, and Terrorists from the U.S. | www.dhs.gov, Aug 2025.

Then, what does compassion with accountability look like? The opposite of demonization is not the absence of accountability. It’s the presence of honest discernment.

Once I was invited to a discussion to develop a public art project in NYC about immigrants. The organizer’s idea, as I understood it, was that anyone who wants to come to the US should give themselves permission to come here. Feeling a bit alarmed by the language that sounded rather extreme to my ears, I said, “you wouldn’t want to sound like you are encouraging people to break the laws?” They told me they didn’t agree with me, they were not concerned about the laws and that people were entitled to select their own path, wherever it leads, and that it is a form of empowerment.

The thing is, I really don’t think there are any immigrants who enjoy or take pride in being on an illegal status. We are not asking to be celebrated for breaking laws. What we need is practical support that helps us integrate, which, if you are on an illegal status, is especially hard to come by. We need more pathways to legal status, a system designed with compassion and the assessment of reality that helps us navigate to a place where we can not only benefit from the social infrastructure, but also give back. Not the “We love immigrants” signs in Park Slope, nor public art that tells us not to be bothered by the laws. Unconditional support for undocumented immigrants, if it does not bother to work on the actual reform of the laws, is rather ignoring the reality we face as immigrants. And it gets even worse when you hear one of those progressive immigrant-lovers expressing gratitude to the food delivery order app so they didn’t have to deal with someone with an accent that is so hard to understand over the phone. (True story!)

An example of what helpful alliance looks like, calling for specific legal reform in plain language: New York Farm Bureau Statement on Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Immigration Raids

Situations like immigration raids underscore the dire need for immigration reform in the United States. Farmers are just one of many groups that have been asking for a better guest worker program in this country for about 40 years.

From the super exciting book I’m currently reading, The Unruly Wild: Embracing Ecological Change in the Southwest by Juliet C. Stromberg (The University of Arizona Press, March 2026):

Rather than using a militaristic framework for invasive species,” he advised, “we need to consider alternatives that recognize our relationship with them, while still promoting conservation action.

Just giving a pass to anyone is not compassion. Compassion is to actually be patient and listen, and find a way to coexist.

Related Posts

The real challenge of learning a language that is not your own is understanding the emotional impact a word or expression carries for native speakers. This is obviously far more complex than reading dictionary definitions. I remember, 15 years ago when I started taking ESL classes, feeling surprised to learn that the word “primitive” did not have a straightforwardly positive connotation in American English, and that I had to be careful using it. To me, primitiveness suggested a source of energy residing in the core of our being.

The same challenge arises when I talk about invasive plants. When I use words like “reflection” and “responsibility,” I only know what they mean to me. I don’t really know how they sound to you.

And that is the long way to integration: bringing different perspectives, different people and species, into how you communicate, into your world, your ecosystem.

I could not have integrated without the help of the people around me. I have been fortunate to have friends who were patient with me and treated me as a real person when my English was pretty much zero. This is what makes me wonder: if I could integrate with enough help, could invasive plants do the same, instead of simply seeing them as invaders who need to be fought off?

Not only my experience of immigration, but the culture I was raised in has had an influence on this perspective. Despite our modernized, Westernized lifestyle, Japanese kids are still familiar with folktales that frequently follow this structure:

1. Human transgression against nature (cutting sacred trees, polluting water, disrespecting spirits)

2. Natural retaliation (floods, storms, curses, disasters)

3. Ritual appeasement (prayers, offerings, replanting, building shrines)

4. Restoration of balance when rituals succeed

Beyond folklore, many works of pop culture repeat this ancient theme. Probably the most internationally recognized example is the 1997 Studio Ghibli film Princess Mononoke, directed by Hayao Miyazaki. At the beginning of the film, a demon (once a wild boar, transformed by habitat loss) attacks Prince Ashitaka’s village. He confronts it to protect his people, showing his respect for life and his desire to understand and appease the creature rather than immediately destroy it.

“Calm your fury, o mighty lord! Whatever you may be, god or demon, please leave us in peace!”

The wise old woman of the village then kneels before the slain demon, promising it a proper burial and asking it to leave without bitterness. But the burial alone is not enough. It takes Prince Ashitaka traveling far from his home to find the root cause of the curse and seek reconciliation.

Western science often critiques such worldviews on ecology for anthropomorphizing non-human things. I don’t think the Eastern worldview is “superior” or “better” either. It is not one or the other. I believe in additions, not replacement: adding a different perspective, a different take, rather than limiting ourselves to one view.

I’ve experienced the value of holding two approaches. When I was young, I had a severe acne problem, along with other health issues that medical tests couldn’t explain. Antibiotics and steroids cleared the acne quickly. I was happy about it at first, but debilitating side effects meant I couldn’t continue. Later I started seeing a Chinese medicine doctor. She would see me once a week and ask: how are you feeling? What did you eat this week? What did your stools look like? And then, based on my answers, she’d mix the medicine for the week. That’s when I realized how little attention I had been paying to my own body. She never told me to avoid ‘bad food,’ but would explain: because this is the tendency of your body, you want to cut this back. Not because it is ‘bad’, but for the sake of balance. I would later find this idea showing up in regenerative farming and indigenous views. This approach took years, but it eventually resolved the acne.

The habit of regular self-reflection laid the groundwork for me to later start psychotherapy to address the real root cause of my physical symptoms, encouraged by the solution-oriented Western mindset I was exposed to while living in NYC. These two approaches are not mutually exclusive; they supplement each other.

Invasive species management is often urgent, and in Western conservation science, the language of elimination is considered responsible stewardship, not aggression. To Westerners, my inherited views on ecology may read as charming but illogical. But why does Western conservation science apply the logic of eradication to plants and animals but not to human settler populations? Is the Western logical mind for integration, or for eradication?

And here lies the challenge of integration. I will always be in favor of integration and I want to find a language that bridges differences, because confrontation would lead us nowhere. We have to be in this together. But I don’t want to silence myself out of fear of offending people who never question their own position as ‘natives’ or their authority to decide who or what belongs. Sometimes those decisions are necessary. But they deserve to be questioned. I resist the normalization of the language of eradication and demonization when it comes to ‘others,’ human or non-human. As someone who chose to live in a new world where I am the “other,” I feel I have no choice in this matter.

I’ve been working over 15 years to learn your language and bridge our gap so I can understand you. I've been spending hundreds of hours on this Beakuency project that is purely a labor of love: researching, interviewing, and listening to local conservationists whose work I admire and whose perspective is rooted in Western science. Will you try to understand me?

A 2023 paper, Contribution of Indigenous Peoples’ understandings and relational frameworks to invasive alien species management, published in People and Nature by Wehi et al. was a very powerful read. It made me feel not alone in questioning things and doubting my identity and heritage.

Indigenous approaches to managing IAS perhaps differ from some leading approaches because instead of setting up conceptual divisions, such as introduced, alien, nonlocal and native, Indigenous approaches focus on a finer texture of relationships among all species, including humans, in a location and region. We see this as one possible reason why Indigenous management may not necessarily favour eradication as a fundamental approach to alien (human-introduced) species that are becoming invasive.

There is no shortcut in building a common language, and I must keep doing my part. In the meantime, for me, it is probably best to let the materials speak for themselves, to let the plants speak for themselves through art.

Wehi, P.M., Kamelamela, K.L., Whyte, K., Watene, K., and Reo, N. (2023). Contribution of Indigenous Peoples’ understandings and relational frameworks to invasive alien species management. People and Nature, British Ecological Society.

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When you don’t feel alone, and you feel like you have a community you can depend on, when things go wrong, you can get help. [Then] People will be, I think, operating in a little bit less from a place of viewing all these things as destructive, taking money, taking time, and [instead] viewing themselves as just a part of this. Human beings are not this exception, we are a part of this world. And as much as farming is human creation, it takes place amongst all these pests and disease or insects and all these things that exist, invasive things, and you have to work with that. And I think it’s actually a lot harder to work with it when you view them as your enemies, even though it can feel like that’s the only way to view them sometimes. I think, letting go and letting yourself become part of this larger picture, even though it requires some relinquishing of that feeling of wanting to control everything and is really scary. (Interview excerpts)

Upcoming Event

Cornell Cooperative Extension Columbia and Greene Counties’ Spring Gardening Day 2026
Saturday, March 28 2026
8AM-3:30pm
Location: Hudson Junior High School (215 Harry Howard Ave, Hudson, NY 12534)

Spring Gardening Day is back! Join us for a full day of learning, inspiration, and connection for gardeners of all levels. This in-person event features practical, science-based workshops, a keynote presentation, vendors, and plenty of opportunities to learn from—and connect with—fellow gardeners.

Fee: $45. For more information and to register, please visit here. I will have a table with Birds of Hudson Valley note cards and some invasive plant pigment art. Hope you can join us!

When I visited Rose Hill Farm in February to interview Kevin and Dallas, pruning was underway in the orchard. After the interview, they took me outside to see the site and collected some of the pruned branches for me to take home and experiment with. The piece above was made using pigments extracted from those materials, except for green which is from Common Buckthorn. The apple branches produced colors similar to those of the Toringo crab apple (yellow, orange, reddish brown and dark brown) which I suppose is not surprising, since they are related. Both are very rich in pigment.

The more I learn about plants that are invasive in the US, the more I feel that moral qualities such as “good” or “bad” may not be inherent traits. Invasive plants are only “bad” in relation to a specific ecosystem rather than being inherently evil. And I suppose the concept of morality is a purely human invention to begin with.

The interview with Kevin and Dallas, and their perspective on the surrounding world with a focus on balance, offered great insight into this way of thinking. Talking about weeds, Kevin said, “Weeds, in quotation marks. I have the belief that all plants that come up out of the ground are there for a reason,” and I have been thinking about it ever since. Complete elimination of invasive species is very unlikely. It may be that we need to think about changing the dynamics, our relationship with them. I will be thinking about what Dallas said as I move forward with this invasive plant project: “It’s actually a lot harder to work with it when you view them as your enemies, even though it can feel like that’s the only way to view them sometimes.” I have deep respect for farmers, biologists and gardeners for whom this is not an abstract question. They must come up with a specific solution for each situation. Artists, unlike them, are not accountable to immediate, concrete outcomes. As an artist, what I can do is be a supporter for those who do real work and celebrate their achievements through creativity.

This leads me to think that human actions may also need to be judged by their dynamics with the surrounding environment rather than through a simple “good guys and bad guys” perspective, no matter how much we want to believe there is such a clear line. Similarly, strength and ability may not be entirely individual achievements. Ethics may be less about individual grit and more about the strength of one’s network. I seem to remember news from a few years ago about Western researchers looking at resilience not simply as a trait belonging to a single person, but as something that resides in relationships with others. Everything may be more fluid than it seems. In ancient times, heroes’ powers were often credited to external forces, such as gods or stars, rather than their own achievements. Maybe ancient people were onto something.

I think the risk of fluid thinking like this is setting boundaries. When someone, or something, is clearly causing harm to others, can this fluid thinking be morphed into making excuses for them? Would that make me complicit in enabling them? What may be even more challenging is that this way of thinking asks us to see the problem as our own, rather than something belonging to 'them.'

But rather than going in with a predetermined conclusion, the assessment has to be made every step of the way, for each situation, and setting boundaries accordingly is the realistic path. You cannot decide what team you are on and settle firmly and comfortably, never re-examining the way you operate. I will be following the way of farmers, their ongoing learning, adapting, and changing, as they do at Rose Hill Farm.

It was on Jan 6 when I first scraped the bark of Oriental Bittersweet to test whether dye could be extracted from it. Seeing the soft inner layer with long, thread-like fibers protruding here and there, I thought: with fibers this long and soft yet tough, couldn’t paper be made? Or even fabric?

Oriental Bittersweet is often disliked because it thrives so vigorously that it takes over other plants. Yet seeing its inside, I felt like I’d glimpsed a gentle side to this hated plant. I’m not the most spiritual person around, but it was as if the plant was telling me what it wanted to be.

I was reminded of what Justin Wexler, a local ethnoecologist who founded Wild Hudson Valley in Catskill, had told me when I asked him how, in ancient times, people knew things like the medicinal quality of plants: “Many native people will say that they sometimes learn directly from the plant or animal. So for eastern woodlands people like the Lenape, from my understanding, they live in relationship with the world around them and everything you see can be sentient. Even a rock has sentience and is capable of communicating with you and will appear to you in human form sometimes to communicate with you.”

Oriental Bittersweet vines are still soft and fresh even in bitter cold. I think the yield will be even better with newer, warmer-season growth. Foraging itself is something to figure out and practice. I had always loved seeing the attush robe traditionally made by the Ainu, the indigenous people of Northern Japan. Yet I was not familiar with their harvesting ritual. In the book Textiles of Japan (the heaviest book I’ve ever owned) it says: “when stripping the bark to make the ohyo bast fiber used for this attush robe, the Ainu would thank the tree for giving up its ‘clothes.’ Only bark from one side would be taken and, when the task was complete, offerings of grain and tobacco would be made to appease the spirit of the tree. A strip of bark would then be wrapped around the tree so that it would not lose any more of its ‘clothes’ in the wind.” When I read this, I felt ashamed of myself. I had been thinking only about taking what I wanted. Since then, I greet and thank the bittersweet when I peel their bark. (I have not quite brought myself to offer tobacco yet.)

I have gotten better at harvesting longer fibers. I use a drop-spindle to make them into threads. I taught myself how to weave a simple fabric using a frame loom.

After researching and experimenting for about two months, I still would not say I quite know what I am doing. But I did manage to weave two pieces of fabric. I will use this material as the canvas for my outdoor art installation on the Hawthorne Valley Farm’s Biodiversity Trail.

Upcoming Events

There are a few events where I’ll have a table this month. I’ll be bringing my Oriental Bittersweet fabric piece, invasive plant pigment art prints, and Birds of Hudson Valley note cards. Come say hi!

Saturday, March 7 - Mad Gardeners Annual Symposium

9AM-3PM at Housatonic Valley Regional High School, 246 Warren Turnpike in Falls Village, CT.

The Mad Gardeners 2026 Symposium will feature three terrific speakers: Lee Clippard, Executive Director of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, will speak about the center, its native plant database and their research on wildflower meadows; Cassie Banning, the Director of Farm and Gardens at the Mt. Desert Land & Garden Preserve, will speak about the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden, a 1920s collaborative design between Mrs. Rockefeller and Beatrix Farrand, and the over 160 annual varieties in its ten-thousand-square-foot border; and Madeline Hooper, creator and host of the public broadcasting series GardenFit, will lead a fun, interactive class on how to use your body to garden without causing aches and pains. For more information, please visit their website. Tickets are on sale here.

Sunday, March 8th - Cornell Cooperative Extension Columbia and Greene Counties’ Maple Festival 2026

10AM-1pm at Agroforestry Resource Center, 6055 Route 23 Acra, NY.

Experience a taste of the sweet world of maple sugaring at CCE’s Agroforestry Resource Center. This event will provide participants with the opportunity to tour our own sugar shack, see a demonstration tree tapping, and taste fresh sap. Visit with Taste NY staff and local venders to purchase all things maple. A maple-inspired pancake breakfast will also be available during the event.

Saturday, March 28th - Cornell Cooperative Extension Columbia and Greene Counties’ Spring Gardening Day 2026

8AM-3:30pm at Hudson Junior High School 215 Harry Howard Ave, Hudson, NY.

Join us for a full day of learning, inspiration, and connection for gardeners of all levels. This in-person event features practical, science-based workshops, a keynote presentation, vendors, and plenty of opportunities to learn from—and connect with—fellow gardeners. Fee: $45. For more information and to register, please visit here.

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This piece above was stencil printed with pigments from Oriental Bittersweet branches (pink) and berries (light orange), Common Buckthorn berries (green), and roots of Toringo Crab Apple (light yellow). It’s a batch that came out pale, so I decided to paint them on a dark background and see what happens. It turned out to be tricky. When I painted, the pigments became invisible for a few minutes. Then some parts began to show their brightness, while others remained invisible. I was completely puzzled by this, tried it on a couple more pieces of paper, and they kept behaving oddly. In the end, I thought this experiment was a failure. (I should have taken a picture then.)

The next morning, I saw that all the colors had come out as shown above.

This whole experience resembles what people encounter when they are tricked by foxes in Japanese folktales, so I titled this piece Bewitched by Foxes.

For this project, I’ve been digging into contemporary and historical documents about these Asian plants. While they often cause serious ecological damage here in the U.S., they have been beneficial to people in their homeland. I thought it would be interesting to use this project to highlight the gentler side of these plants. I’m collecting information from books and the online archive of the National Diet Library of Japan, which is a pretty fun rabbit hole.

For example, the image above is from an exhibition catalog put together by 神宮徴古館農業館 the Jingu Agricultural Museum, Japan’s first industrial museum established in 1891 to promote the divine virtues of 天照大神 Amaterasu Ōmikami (the sun goddess) and 豊受大神 Toyouke Ōmikami (the goddess of food and grains), with the theme of “how the products of nature can be useful.” The image is a page of the third edition published in 1934 where Toringo Crab Apple is listed as one of the common dye plants.

Working with plants to process them into materials makes you feel close to them. Looking at these invasive plants in my hands, I sometimes wonder, “What are we doing here, why are we here, on the other side of the globe?” Even though I am happy living in the Hudson Valley, I feel a sense of loss inside, because I will not go back to live in the place where I am from. But here are these plants that I would see if I lived in Japan. They feel like a link to that world with not only natural elements but also numerous small shrines people have erected to honor them. There are no shrines here, only these plants and me. There is a small, strange comfort in this lonesome togetherness.

道の辺の　うまらの末に　這ほ豆の からまる君を　はなれか行かむ

Like creeping bean vines at the tip of the Multiflora Rose by the roadside, you cling to me. How could I ever leave you behind?

— 丈部鳥（Hasetsukabe no Tori）、万葉集 巻二十 4352 Manyoshu (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves), the oldest existing anthology of Japanese poetry compiled around 759 AD.

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Whether we like it or not, invasive species are (most likely) here to stay. We can’t dismiss their real ecological harm, but viewing them as abstract “enemy aliens” does not address the underlying reasons for their presence. I have felt that a more nuanced, multi-dimensional understanding of these species is needed, because short-sighted decisions in the past that failed to consider the complex dynamics of ecosystems are the very reason for their arrival and persistence.

There is no shortcut to “solving” the issue of invasive species. Instead, we can begin by reflecting on our mindsets that demand quick answers or easy labels, so we don’t make similar mistakes in the future. Hate and fear of any kind need to be replaced with a productive, experimental relationship.

This is the theme I am pursuing through this project for the Hawthorne Valley’s Biodiversity Trail. I’m happy to find a positive use for these plants, many of whom share the homeland with me, no matter how small. This is a further development of my experiment with non-native plants from 2023.

There are so many things you can do with these plants and many variations to experiment with. I am excited to continue working with them and am looking forward to the final result: an outdoor installation along the Biodiversity Trail which will be installed in spring 2027.

Related Article

A new art project for Hawthorne Valley Farm’s Biodiversity Trail using invasive plants, inspired by the farm’s living ecosystem, and 100-year-old poems.

The inspiration for the stencil painting above came from birding there on December 16th.

As I was walking toward the woody part of it, I felt that there might be a Pileated Woodpecker in there. At first it was quiet, but eventually chickadees and titmice started to call.

Then a group of juncos and bluebirds appeared. I heard a White-breasted Nuthatch laughing. And then drumming: two Red-bellied Woodpeckers, two Downy Woodpeckers, and a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. I waited a bit longer, and sure enough, a Pileated Woodpecker arrived.

I think I may have started to understand what intuition is made of. All the rich information you receive through your five senses, if your brain is not attuned to it, would be filtered out as unimportant. But when you learn the meanings of subtle cues, your brain can make sense of them. There’s something humorously over the top about the Pileated Woodpecker, both in the way it calls and drums. My ears must have received its sounds from afar, combined with the habitat my eyes were seeing, culminating in this vague feeling of “there must be a Pileated Woodpecker in here.”

Some other birds’ signals are often more subtle than those of the Pileated Woodpecker, and I imagine that the more experienced you are, the more such cues your brain can pick up before you can verbalize them. You get the feeling. That seems to me to be what intuition may be.

And perhaps that also explains many mysterious moments I remember from Japanese folklore, where the supernatural speaks to humans, warning, breaking news, etc. People in the old times must have been more attuned to the natural world than we are, as their lives were depending on it. I’m reminded of a story, The Magical Listening Hood, that allows a man to understand what wild animals say. I wonder if it was explaining what intuition is, in the language of folklore.

On October 26, 2025 at the North Chatham Free Library, I gave a presentation about the Beakuency art zine project. “You are indispensable, not because you’re special or better than others, but because you’re here, now” is the theme of this presentation. I specifically discussed citizen science, one of several themes in the zine, what it’s like to participate in one, why it matters and how others can join. I also spoke about its influence on my work as an artist, and how its mindset resonates with the principles of the Mingei Japanese folk art movement, which inspired me to pursue art 30 years ago. It was so wonderful to have a good number of attendances, and supported by my birding friends. Framed original illustrations created for the zine were displayed for the presentation.

Beakuency zine distribution begins!

Beakuency zine is now out and distribution has started! Currently you can pick up a physical copy for free at:

• Hudson Area Library (Hudson)

• Art Omi visitor center (Ghent)

• North Chatham Free Library (North Chatham)

• Olana State Historic Site gift shop (Hudson)

• Columbia Land Conservancy office (Chatham)

• Old Books (Hudson)

• Kinderhook Memorial Library (Kinderhook) begins on Nov 20.

I’m setting up more distribution points next week.

Zines were also given away for free at CREATE Council on the Arts’ open house event on November 16th.

This project was made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the NY State Council on the Arts supported by the Office of the Governor and the NY State Legislature and administered by the CREATE Council on the Arts.

Holiday Markets!

In addition to Birds of Hudson Valley note card series, I will bring Four Seasons Birthday Collection and some other items for sale. Hope to see you there!

Nov 28 - Nov 30 10am-5pm
BASILICA FARM & FLEA HOLIDAY MARKET
Basilica Hudson, 110 S Front St, Hudson, NY
Purchase tickets here.

Dec 7 12–4 pm
Winter Walk in the Wilderness
I’ll have a table at Roeliff Jansen Historical Society, 8 Miles Rd, Copake Falls, NY
Free. I will also have Beakuency zine copies to give away!

Biodiversity Trail

A new project has started. I don’t know the name of it yet. But it is for the Biodiversity Trail that newly opened at the Hawthorne Valley farm in Ghent, Columbia County.

A 2022 biodiversity survey conducted by the Farmscape Ecology Program documented nearly 600 species of wild-growing plants, about 100 species of birds, close to 100 butterfly species, more than 250 moth species, and many other creatures—all living within an active farming landscape. From wet meadows to forest edges, these species are woven into the daily life of the farm.

The trail highlights this interconnection. Interpretive signs invite visitors to consider not only the beauty of these species but also how farm practices influence them and how, in turn, biodiversity enriches the land. In this way, the Biodiversity Trail serves as both a celebration of Hawthorne Valley’s natural heritage and an invitation to imagine how farms everywhere can become places where agriculture and wild nature flourish together.

(https://farm.hawthornevalley.org/biodiversity-trail/)

This art installation that I will be working on for many moons to come is a new development from my experiment with non-native plant pigments. It will be a sort of soft mural, stencil painted on fabric. As for paints, I will work with non-native plants that are clearly invasive, dominating many of the resources in the local ecosystem. The paints are made from materials gathered each year, so the colors of the mural will reflect those variations and change over time. This piece is not meant to last forever. It is meant to be tended and redone periodically. No farmer plants things, and then walks away and forgets about them. Since it will be in the farm field, it makes sense to me to try to follow the way of farmers.

Inspiration for this project

When Spencer Fenniman, the farm manager, asked me earlier this year if I’d be interested in creating art for the Biodiversity Trail, an image came to my mind and has stayed with me since: a chalkboard with the words, “I am in the lower field. Kenji.”

“Kenji” refers to Kenji Miyazawa, a Japanese poet, children’s book author, and a specialist in agricultural science who was born in 1896. I have loved his books since I was ten years old. He taught at Hanamaki Agricultural School before founding Rasuchijin Kyokai, a private school for local farmers. There, he gave lectures on chemistry, soil science, fertilizers, and peasant art theory: a belief that art should grow out of the everyday lives of ordinary people, especially farmers. A fan of classical music, he hosted record-listening gatherings for the local farming community, as well as storytelling events for children. He was a devout Buddhist, and his closest friend was a Christian. His stories often take place in Ihatov, an imaginary world where nature, the universe, and human spirituality are deeply intertwined. He also studied Esperanto, dreaming that one day he could write in a language that would connect him with readers beyond his homeland. He died in 1933.

The chalkboard was at the entrance of the Rasuchijin Kyokai building. Kenji used it to let visitors and students know when he was out working in the fields.

After his passing, the building was relocated and restored on the grounds of Hanamaki Agricultural High School. During the restoration, Kenji’s brother rewrote the same message on the chalkboard, carefully tracing Kenji’s handwriting. To this day, students at the agricultural high school continue to overwrite the message in chalk.

When humans want something to last forever, we often try to preserve it using materials that are strong, durable, and archival. The invention of plastic bags is a good example. They were originally created to save trees, since their durability meant people could reuse them instead of constantly replacing paper bags. In the end, however, the more sustainable approach proved to be maintaining natural cycles by continuing to plant trees and manage forests responsibly. Yet many artworks are still made with this same linear view of longevity, to be archived in museums, kept in collections, or valued as investments.

In the natural world, however, longevity seems to mean disappearing and returning, like a flower that fades in winter and blooms again in spring. It’s less about permanence and individuality, and more about renewal and the collective.

Kenji’s writing remains on the chalkboard to this day, even though it was made with materials that easily fade. Because there is still someone who resonates with him, someone who returns to the board and restores his words, like a new generation of Dark-eyed Juncos returning to the Hudson Valley in winter, showing us their new, yet old, familiar faces.

So that is what my Biodiversity Trail art installation is modeled after. I’ll keep coming back and putting it back like Kenji did. And if it means something to someone, maybe someday they will take over after me. They could use my stencil, or they could create their own. And when there are no longer people who carry this idea with them, that will be the end of this art installation.

First Foraging

October 29, I spent a couple of hours foraging for invasive plants along the trail. Claudia Knab-Vispo and Anna Duhon from the Farmscape Ecology Program helped me with accurate plant identification, suggestions, digging and picking. I already learned so much in this one trip.

On the way to Hawthorne Valley Farm, there was a brief shower, but when I arrived, the sun peeked out. Anna said we might see a rainbow. A little later, the sky was covered in clouds again.

　帰りみち、ひでり雨が降りまたかゞやかに霽（は）れる。そのかゞやく雲の原

今日こそ飛んであの雲を踏め。

　On the way home, a sudden shower falls

and clears again in a flash. That fleeting expanse of bright clouds,

today at last I’ll fly and tread upon those clouds.

（Kenji Miyazawa, “秋田街道”）

We collected berries, roots, and barks of 10 invasive species. The next step is to experiment and find out what colors they produce. I hope to find good uses for these plants, many of which I share a homeland with.

Despite the divisive times we live in, polls* show that Americans are fairly united on environmental issues. I’ve seen this firsthand as a member of the birding community here in Columbia County, which already has a history of working together across party lines on local conservation efforts. I choose this narrative, right here in front of me, to define my world, rather than the divisiveness imposed on us. We need to start pushing more for such an alliance from the bottom up, working with one another to find one thing we can agree on despite other differences.

Birds create such a powerful connection for us. This connection is what I celebrate through this art zine Beakuency: Meet Bird People in Columbia County! It features a series of my interviews with local birders, conservationists, scientists, farmers and a historian, and new illustrations inspired by their stories. Topics include local bird conservation efforts, citizen science projects, birding tips, community building, and actions we can take to help local birds.

The North Chatham Free Library has been hosting a series of varied arts programs with the theme, “Nurturing community through the arts”. As part of this series, I am giving a presentation on Sunday October 26, 2025 at 3pm at North Chatham Free Library (4287 Route 203 North Chatham, NY). I will discuss this zine project, and explore the power of ‘folk’, the thread that has connected bird conservation efforts, the Japanese Mingei folk art movement, and my own work as an artist. + Probably Star Trek. I hope you can join me!

This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the NY State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the NY State Legislature and administered by CREATE Council on the Arts.

**source:

Support for Implementing Natural Climate Solutions in the United States is Strong and Growing By: Nathan Henry, Director of U.S. Nature4Climate | August 7, 2024

Big State and Local Wins for Climate and Conservation in the United States By: Adam Snyder (The Nature Conservancy) | November 06, 2024 | ARLINGTON, VA

The reception party of Birds of the Hudson Valley art show at the Agroforestry Resource Center of the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Columbia and Greene Counties is happening on this Saturday, Aug 2, 2025, 3pm-5pm. I have 38 paintings currently showing there. Refreshments will be served, and P.G. Six will play the harp!

Pat Gubler is a New York multi-instrumentalist who is also known as P.G. Six. In addition to his solo works, he has been in Tower Recordings and Metal Mountains, and is currently active in Garcia Peoples. Pat’s The Well of Memory (2025 Expanded Edition) will be released on August 8, 2025 from Amish Records.

This art show is part of the Art at the ARC, a program by CCE in collaboration with the CREATE Council on the Arts.

The Birds of the Hudson Valley art show features 38 stencil paintings by Mayuko Fujino that celebrate the local landscapes where nature, birds, and humans coexist and thrive. Fujino creates her paintings with hand-cut stencils and natural pigments, some of which she extracts from locally collected rocks and non-native plants. She often finds inspiration for her work in conversations with local bird enthusiasts. Some of the pieces in this show highlight farms that incorporate bird-friendly practices despite the many challenges of farming, such as creating winter habitats for sparrows, installing nest boxes, and protecting breeding grounds for grassland birds. Through this exhibit, she hopes to connect with more farmers who love birds and share their philosophy and products on her radio show Beakuency: Meet Bird People in the Hudson Valley! on Wave Farm's WGXC 90.7 FM, a community radio station based in Greene County. If you are a bird-loving farmer or know one, she would love to visit your farm for an interview! Email her at hi@mayukofujino.com.

Birds of the Hudson Valley art show at the Agroforestry Resource Center of the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Columbia and Greene Counties opens today (Monday, July 7.) This exhibition is part of the Art at the ARC, a program by CCE in collaboration with the CREATE Council on the Arts. It will be on view until the end of September. Open weekdays (closed for lunch 12:00-12:30 pm) at the CCE Agroforestry Resource Center (6055 Route 23 Acra, New York 12405).

The reception party is on Saturday, Aug 2, 2025 3pm-5pm. Refreshments will be served, and PG Six will play the harp!
https://ccecolumbiagreene.org/events/2025/07/26/art-opening-mayuko-fujino

The Birds of the Hudson Valley art show features 38 stencil paintings by Mayuko Fujino that celebrate the local landscapes where nature, birds, and humans coexist and thrive. Fujino creates her paintings with hand-cut stencils and natural pigments, some of which she extracts from locally collected rocks and non-native plants. She often finds inspiration for her work in conversations with local bird enthusiasts. Some of the pieces in this show highlight farms that incorporate bird-friendly practices despite the many challenges of farming, such as creating winter habitats for sparrows, installing nest boxes, and protecting breeding grounds for grassland birds. Through this exhibit, she hopes to connect with more farmers who love birds and share their philosophy and products on her radio show Beakuency: Meet Bird People in the Hudson Valley! on Wave Farm's WGXC 90.7 FM, a community radio station based in Greene County. If you are a bird-loving farmer or know one, she would love to visit your farm for an interview! Email her at hi@mayukofujino.com.

Birds of the Hudson Valley Note Cards at Olana Historic Site!

The Olana Historic Site gift shop now has all 29 designs from the Birds of the Hudson Valley series available as note cards!

Olana Shop
Hours Tuesday – Sunday, 9:30 AM – 5:00 PM (Third Thursdays: 12:00 PM – 7:00 PM)
Vintage, handmade, unique, and Taste NY items for everyone. Your purchase at The Olana Shop supports our work to restore, protect, and interpret Frederic Church’s Olana.

https://olana.org/

The presentation was on May 3rd. To my happy surprise the room was packed and the audience was very engaged. I spoke for 30 minutes covering various topics, such as the Mingei folk art movement, DIY culture, DEI, and my Beakuency zine project. Below is an excerpt in which I discuss the power of printed matter as a happy way to relate to the world, and explain that this is one of the project's goals.

An excerpt from the presentation

In the world we live in today, if you have a radio show or a podcast, what often matters is how many listeners you get, or how many downloads you get. And that's an important metric to assess how much are you reaching out to people. But I want to also not always look at the world and our lives from a marketing consultant perspective.

I know Beakuency is a good program because the people I talk to are great. I believe in the ideas and insights and observations that all the bird people [that I interview] have. I know these are great ideas that's being shared on my radio show. And so, how can I have a long term relationship with the listeners and the world, not just the short sighted “how many listeners you get”? You know, those are the numbers you present if you want to get a sponsorship or something. But if you're really thinking about just communicating with people, there are many ways to relate to people and relate to the world. How can I accomplish that kind of long term goal was the question. I really want these interviews to be an archive that will be accessible 25 years later, 50 years later, 100 years later. Somebody may be interested in learning about birds and bird conservation efforts in Hudson Valley, for whatever reason, they might want to look it up many years from now. And I want my interviews to be available to those people.

And so how do I want that connection to happen? I was talking to my partner Pat, who’s standing over there, who was playing the harp [for the opening reception]. And he said I should make a zine because printed matter has a long lifetime than an online archive.

I have some physical materials that I want to show you as an example. This is Walks by Protected Land in Columbia County by Sheldon Evans. Second edition, produced by Columbia Land Conservancy. This came out in 2002. In 2002, I had no idea that I was going to be here. I was in Japan, and I was not even interested in birds. I was not even interested in nature. I found this book at this bookstore called Old Books on Warren Street. Really cool store. I try not to go there [because] I lose tons of money every time I go there. It's run by this artist, Mike Donovan, a friend of Pat. Every time I go there I find really cool stuff. And this is something — well, it's pretty self explanatory — it's about the places in Columbia county and it's even got the map of our sanctuary, Wilson Powell Wildlife Sanctuary in it. And when this book was made, whoever made this [book] had no idea [that] some Japanese person [would] show up 20 years later and get excited about it. This is a once-in-a-lifetime meeting that can happen to printed matter. You don't really get that experience over social media. This physical object that happened to be in this one cool bookstore, and I just showed up, and I found it. I find this to be a really happy encounter. And that's how I want to relate to the world. That's the happy way of relating to the world.

I want to show you another example of such a happy meeting. This is a 7-inch record… or [rather] I found it in a 7-inch record shelf of this record store in Tokyo that I used to go, which was filled with DIY, handmade or small scale production records and cassette tapes. Some of you [in the audience] are really familiar with the culture, I'm looking at my friend Bryan Zimmerman who's really into self release underground music scene. That was what I was interested [in] when I was in Japan.

This [7-inch] record is called No Electro. I have no idea who the artist is. And it's got... [shows the disc inside] cardboard in it.

When I saw this, I got really excited because, I don't know what this artist was thinking but I thought, well, this means that I have to exercise my imagination to enjoy this 7-inch. I have to be an active participant and can't be a passive consumer to enjoy this piece of art. I really resonated with that idea. And I just love the fact that some crazy person thought of making this and even tried to sell it. And some shop owner said, okay, we're going to sell it for you. Which is pretty crazy. And then, I showed up and be like, okay, I'm gonna buy this. I paid money for this. And so, we found each other. And it only takes three people to create this happy encounter. This is completely wrong from market consultant point of view, this is completely wrong. But this brought such happiness to three people and I think it's great.

And so that's the kind of happy encounter for my Beakuency zine project to happen when I print it. It has to be printed in the future, in, I hope, October or September.

Thanks to Marcia Anderson for documenting the presentation!

The fundraiser was a success!

One of the goals of this show was to raise funds for the Beakuency Art Zine Project. The Beakuency Zine project was selected by the community members to receive the Statewide Community Regrant Program administered by the Create Council on the Arts, which will cover printing costs. However, some expenses are not eligible for coverage, including equipment costs. I was still using a 2012 Macbook, but creating a 90-page zine project required more power. Thanks to those who came to the show and purchased paintings, prints, and cards, I was able to purchase a newer model refurbished MacBook powerful enough to run Adobe InDesign while also supporting the Kinderhook Memorial Library. After covering the show's expenses and the cost of the MacBook, 50% of the remaining sales from this show were donated to the library.

The zine will be printed in fall 2025. In October, I will give a presentation about it at the North Chatham Free Library as part of their program Literature and the Arts, a series of varied arts programs with the theme, "Nurturing community through the arts.”

And thanks again to Marian Sole for this amazing cake, which celebrated both the presentation and my becoming an American citizen.

“Whether the economy is good or bad, people must live as human beings. ... ‘Publishing is not influenced by economic trends, but is based on the way people are’ — this is what the publishing industry was like in the era when it was said to be ‘recession-proof’. This was so because the mainstay of publishing was the book, the purpose of which was to think about how we live our lives. Such things cannot become very huge industries. ... If publishing becomes a media industry, it will depend on .. the state of the economy. That is an abandonment of the sovereignty of publishing.”

“When the ‘unprecedented’ recession hits, we must ask, ‘how do we want to live when this great recession is over? [instead of trying to bring back the ‘golden age.’] Only this can be the fundamental force that brings an end to the Great Recession.”

—大不況には本を読む (Read books in times of great recession) by 橋本治 Osamu Hashimoto, 2009

(The quote is translated from Japanese to English by me, it is not an official version.)

I am making a book, 90-page art zine “Beakuency: Meet Bird People in Columbia County!” It features interviews with local birders and illustrations inspired by their stories. This is my third year of interviewing birders. Asking them about birds has turned out to be also an exploration of “what do we want the world to look like?” I find the ideas birders share empowering because they are not abstract, “one-with-nature” type of feel-good inspirational quotes, but are very specific. What do we want our food, backyards, public outdoor spaces to look like? The birding community is even the reason I attended town hall meetings for the first time in my life. Many of us have already been sick of the way things are in this extreme capitalistic world. But then how specifically do we want to live instead? I will continue to explore this with more interviews and my art inspired by them.

This zine project was chosen by a review panel of community members to receive funds from 2025 Statewide Community Regrant Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of The Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by CREATE Council on the Arts. I am so glad that this will allow me to print a much larger number of copies than I could do out of my own pocket, and to distribute them for free. I will be setting up distribution stations with the help of the North Chatham Free Library and the Kinderhook Memorial Library, as well as other locations in Columbia County. Grant ceremonies will be in June - more details to come.

I will have an art show and presentation at the Kinderhook Memorial Library (Columbia County, NY) in May to raise funds to cover the rest of the costs for this zine project and to talk about it with people in my community. I am installing the show on May 1st and the reception/presentation will be on Saturday, May 3rd, 2pm - 4pm. I hope you can join me.

I’m also seeking more grant suggestions! If you'd like to personally support this project (thank you!), you can do so by becoming a paid subscriber on this Beakuency Substack or a purchasing my work from my Etsy shop. Your shopping for a $5 bird greeting card can make a difference for me and this project! For more information on this zine project, including a spreadsheet of costs, please visit: mayukofujino.com/beakuency-zine-project

The image is one of the stencil illustrations for the zine, hand cut and painted on paper with natural pigments made from rocks collected in the Hudson Valley.

In my last Beakuency interview with Marian Sole, she mentioned that birds create a safe, welcoming space for people to meet.

Birders come in all political persuasions. They come in all religious persuasions, all income persuasions. It's a very democratic, with a small D kind of group of people. And you meet a lot of very interesting people that way. But they tend to be incredibly helpful people. Birders like to help and share what they've seen, and they like to help you find the bird.

That also has been my experience with birders in Columbia county, NY. But what exactly is "safe" and "welcoming"? Obviously it would mean different things to different people, and also different contexts (such as the working environment of conservation jobs, with which I have no experience.) So this is more on a personal level, but I think I'd have a clearer idea if I thought about what was unsafe or unwelcoming. For me they are often caused by language barriers.

A couple of years ago I almost joined a group art show. We were discussing the show title, and one of the participants had a name he really wanted to use. The name had an unusual word in it. English being my second language, I asked what it meant and what the intention was in using this obscure word. Since this show was taking place at a local community-oriented space supposedly open to different social groups, I suggested that we might want to consider the inclusivity of the language we use —which really just means, how about using words that more people, including myself, can actually understand? I received a surprisingly hostile response from the artist. He accused me of "politicizing" the conversation by bringing up "DEI" which was not even a word I used in my question. He wrote in long notes that DEI policies were just a tool for the rich to pass their guilt on to the poor. He didn't stop emailing me even long after I told the group that I would no longer engage in this conversation and show. This was the first time I had received hostility from a person who was very strongly triggered by (even a hint of) the concept of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Now, I don't always ask people to speak at the level I understand. I don't show up at a conference of neurologists discussing the latest medical research and demand that they break it down so I can be included. Each space needs a certain language to achieve its own purpose, and it's perfectly fine for that language to be exclusive if necessary. Exclusivity is not necessarily evil or racist in the dictionary sense. I just think that if I were an artist participating in an art show, I should be included in group decision making and not be made to feel uncomfortable asking questions.

Another example of an unwelcoming space, but on the liberal side: many years ago in New York City, I participated in a group show at an art fair (really should stay clear of art shows) organized by a curator who lived in Westchester and whose mission was to support women artists and artists of color. The other women (all of European descent) in the show all wore expensive clothes, had husbands with social status, and knew how to socialize with wealthy people. I, on the other hand, was an immigrant who was still in the stage of struggling just to exist. My English was simple, far from code-switching capable (still is.) Nobody, including the curator, tried to meet me halfway and communicate with me. I felt out of place. The experience of exclusion itself was common for me at the time, but to have it in a space that claimed to value diversity made me realize that after all I was only a tool for this business promotion. And as soon as the curator found out that I was not the kind of asset that would bring collectors and sales, she became very unfriendly. So, I get it that some people say that those who push for DEI are only virtue signaling, or worse, want it for their branding strategy. In some cases, they are.

But poor execution shouldn’t negate the idea of diversity, equity and inclusion itself.

Birds are a great equalizer

Speakers of a dominant language can go on without learning others’. People of a dominant culture feel no inconvenience by not knowing anyone else’s. They don’t need to make the effort for mutual understanding, it’s almost always a job for the powerless. I was treated as if I didn't exist countless times until I could speak English better. I also have experience of being part of the mainstream, having spent most of my life in my home country, living without a disability, etc. I feel that I have been on both sides of this dynamic.

Having felt this disparity for many years, it was almost funny to find birders so eager to learn the foreign language of birds. As humans, the current dominant species on Earth, it’s possible for us to go about our daily lives without even acknowledging other creatures, just as I used to be oblivious to the vast diversity of birds in New York City in the past. Or just as I, too, as a non-English speaker, was invisible to many I met in that same city. Yet birders learn the birds’ language as if there’s a plan for them to immigrate to a bird nation. Listening to CDs, taking classes, some have even developed speech.

Birds are a great equalizer. They don’t care if we appreciate them or not. They are just as wary of us, birder or not. And they don’t show up for you just because you have high-end binoculars.

When I meet a birder, we talk about birds that are equally alien to both of us. Expert birders didn’t have bird parents, they had to earn their knowledge just as I had to learn American culture. And many of them are eager to help those who come after them, just like ESL teachers who were once foreigners themselves.

Through birds, I meet neighbors that I wouldn’t otherwise because of our differences in age, culture, class, religion, or opinion. And it doesn't make me feel out of place, because this time for once, I don't have to do that minority's job and go all the way to where they're standing to make a connection. Instead, we both have to go all the way to where the birds are, and we are all students and visitors in the world of birds. While there is always room for improvement in any community, and to keep thinking about leaving no one behind, for me it seems this local birding community is a level playing field that has finally been found.

おくのほそ道 (The Narrow Road to the Deep North, 1702) by 松尾 芭蕉 (Matsuo Bashō) reminds me that the Japanese tended to think of our being not as a self-contained, completely independent individual, but rather that each of us is a manifestation of a dynamic with others. Basho explains why he must leave: "I seemed to be possessed by the spirits of wanderlust, and they almost robbed me of my senses." The change is happening within him, but instead of saying HE wants to go on this trip, it's the external influences, such as そヾろ神 pushing him and 道祖神 inviting him, that are responsible.

I think it’s interesting to use this ancient idea of possession to look at social problems. You could say that one is "possessed" by the spirit of poverty, rather than blaming the individual. Usually in folklore the cause goes back to some historical event, the grudge of an abused soul, a monster born from the destruction of the environment, that sort of thing. By identifying the spirit, you'll know the way to exorcise it and thus liberate people from poverty.

I like this perspective on life. I think there's some truth in it. Living in the US for over a decade, I've often been exposed to the cultural value of the “self-made man,” self-control and responsibility. You could say it's about believing in yourself which is positive. But that can sometimes turn into arrogance, a short-sighted hecticness that pursues goals and immediate validations instead of sitting down and observing things for a long time.

On the other hand, the idea that the power to shape your life is not within you can be discouraging. Maybe that's one of the reasons why Japanese society wasn't very empowering for me when I lived there. So there’s pros and cons to every perspective. But it's not like you have to choose just one. And it seems that even in the US there's more talk about external qualities of resilience rather than seeing it as a fixed personal trait. I guess, as the Japanese say, いい加減 is the best (which translates to "just right, good balance," but also "irresponsible," which I find funny).

Illustrations of Basho’s travel are all from 鼇頭奥之細道 (1859) included in 奥の細道古註 (via 国立国会図書館).

I find it helpful for one's mental health to join citizen science projects when there's so much doom and gloom in the news. I don't have the education to understand or change environmental policy myself, but I can at least do a small part of the legwork to support those who do and their work. It's hard to know what's right and what's wrong, there are so many layers to the world. But one thing is clear, we need data/information to figure out anything. So I can be sure that participating in citizen science projects is a positive thing. Nice to have that simplicity in life sometimes. (Read my interview with George Steele to learn more about the Christmas Bird Count, one of the oldest community science projects that occurs December 14 to January 5 every year.)

I created the first version of this illustration of eastern bluebirds in 2016, inspired by the National Audubon Society's Climate Watch Pilot Program, which is one of those projects that citizens can contribute to. There were a few details in the original piece I wasn't happy with, so I reworked it recently, which is the image above.

Climate Watch aims to document the response of birds to climate change by asking volunteers to count targeted species in their area and submit the data. The eastern blue bird is one of the target species. Audubon uses the data collected to project how each species' range will shift as climate change and other human impacts continue across the continent.

Climate Watch takes place during the winter, January 15 - February 15, 2025, so if you want to participate, now is the time to learn the survey protocol and sign up.
https://www.audubon.org/features/esri-climate-watch