He changed my life! :D

Before going home, I used to stop by at a bookstore in my station back in Japan. I felt like all the books there always give me inspirations. One evening the book by Makoto (Mako) Nagasawa was calling me from the bookshelf. I picked up the book and opened it. The book was filled with his colorful travel illustrations and writings by his wife. I thought his life is just ideal: traveling all over the world and publishing books. 

A picture arrived from Mako with my relax and feel good mug ;D 

Notice his dynamic watercolor paintings behind him!

Several months later, I saw a poster in the train about his book signing event but sadly the event was already over. My father is a cinematographer and my mother used to design clothes so I grew up in an artistic family but I had never taken any drawing or painting classes. My desire to learn those skills started to grow. I visited all the "culture centers" in Tokyo and Yokohama to see if there are any interesting art classes. (If you imagine an afterschool for adults, that is a "culture center" in Japan.)
One evening amazingly I found Mako's watercolor & drawing course in Yokohama culture center!! This was his first time to teach there. I still remember how excited I was to find his class there! It was my destiny! :D I took the 3 months course then he became my mentor :D As his assistant, I travelled Venezia, Toscana, Positano, Amalfi and all around Japan together!


(The picture above is taken by me in Venezia ;D) I was so happy traveling and making art with him ;D Mako used to live in New York City and showed me his numerous drawings and watercolor paintings, which made me want to go to New York City even after the September 11th! To me, New York seems to be a perfectly crazy place where I can be myself and feel at home ;D
The big inspiration to move to New York City was from Mako and he changed my life wonderfully!

Mako, Thank YOU soooo much for your Huge Love, Encouragement, Inspiration, Support and Guidance as always!!

Super Hydroponic!!

Earth Day, Everyday! ;D I would like to share one of the ultimate ways to reduce our carbon footprints for both human and planetary health: create an organic hydroponic garden in your urban apartment ;D If you live in a house with a yard or greenhouse, it's even better!
This basil plant is happily growing in filtered water and nutrients! This is the first time for me to see basil flowers and I am speechless in their beauty...!

Here are our baby seedlings in "coir": fiber from coconuts husk:

Happy cucumber babies:

Beautiful sunflower baby is coming out:

Our tiny yet super-local organic garden ;D 

If you live in Massachusetts and want to set up a hydroponic garden, you should definitely visit Greenlife Garden Supply in Billerica! These awesome hydroponic gurus, Steve and Matt, will help you all the way to create your garden! They are always fun, the store is full of colorful psychedelic graphics and reggae music is playing so I am feeling at home ;D

From left, Matt, Mihoko and Steve:

All the fun colorful graphics:

And of course their green babies are growing amazingly!! Here is their Swiss Chard; they are as long as my arms!

Super healthy Collard Green:

Matt told me that these purple lights create no heat:

Let's bring organic produce to your super-local garden to keep us and our earth healthy and happy! ;D

Fabulous Moo!

The Altpick Awards gave me the opportunity to create business cards at Moo.com; the Moo experience was so pleasant! Moo's logo and fonts are lovable and the web-interface is an eye pleaser. Their super-user-friendly instructions are crystal-clear all the way! :D

The big difference between a regular printer and Moo is that with Moo you can print various images on your cards! For example, if you are printing 100 business cards, you can have 100 different images if you like. And Moo cares about the environment! They now have 100% recycled paper, which is produced using wind energy! ;D 

My box of Moo cards arrived several days earlier than the estimate delivery date! I respect and admire Moo's packaging ability :D They are thinking about the person who is opening the package; it is a feast for your eyes and super smooth to handle ;) The quality of the "Moo Green" business card is really impressive! All my colors are printed exactly the way I wanted. Several environmental printing companies once told me that the hot pink is very difficult to print on 100% recycled paper but Moo makes it possible!! 

Now when I meet people I fan out a deck of my cards and let them choose the one they like, but they quite often love several of the different artworks so I end up giving multiple cards to each person. So the only problem is that you will give away a lot more cards, which is actually great for your business so it's not really a problem at all! ;D

Sending my Huge Thank YOU to Moo for making artists happy & sparkle, and special thanks to Maria Ragusa-Burfield, the founder of Altpick, for introducing me to Moo! ;D

As a side note, my name in Japanese is 羽方 美穂子 (Hakata Mihoko). On the information side of my business card you may notice the pink stamp, "hanko" in Japanese, showing the character of my first name 美穂子. I curbed the stone and polished it to create the hanko probably back in junior high school in Japan! Dango shape was my inspiration because it is so comfortable for our hands. When you hold this super smooth and sleek hanko, it will make you want to keep stamping! Usually we use red ink for hanko in Japan but of course I chose hot pink color for the business card! ;D

Big Arigatoooo!

BIG Thank YOU for stopping by, Bob Breslin, Coralie Henderson, Elvira Ivanova, Jeff Pike, Keyvan Nicoucar, Lauri Murphy, Leah Arnold, Mike Mahoney, Tony Tambunan, even though you guys are super busy!! That meant a lot to me :D You know I don't have many friends here yet! And Thank YOU so much for your emotional support, even though you couldn't make it to the show :D

Below is the Harvard Art Show poster with everyone's artworks :)