Mayuko Fujino resides in a rural area nestled in the Hudson Valley’s Columbia County. But if there’s an origin story for her as an artist, it would begin far away from there.
As a teenager growing up near Tokyo, Fujino caught a flash of inspiration from work by stencil textile artist Keisuke Serizawa, a leader in the century-old Mingei art movement. “There was an exhibit at a local history museum, and they were showing how he made these stencils,” she recalls. “I thought, I could do this! And so I started teaching myself how to do paper cutout.”
Mingei can be described as folk art, which is also how the word is often translated into English from Japanese. As such, its style is rooted in the anonymous craftsmanship of common people, its audience is non-exclusive, its methods are traditional and often include natural materials, and as Fujino explains, simplicity is usually the necessary design outcome.
“The founder’s name is Sōetsu Yanagi, and he defined beauty to be something that resides in the simple vessels and that is created selflessly,” she says. “The reason why anonymous craftsmen can achieve that selfless beauty is because they make a lot, and they make it fast, and so they don’t give themselves enough time to overthink,” she adds, noting that this trains the artist to produce work organically and free from ego.
Fujino has pursued this artistic ethos for over two decades as her life’s journey brought her to New York City. In this urban setting, she noticed how plastic bags littered the streets as the wind carried them aimlessly like lost souls trapped in our environment. During the pandemic lockdown, she found relief and purpose in collecting this litter and making beautiful cutout art pieces from it — in essence, rescuing it from litter limbo. And as if by some form of redemption, New York state enacted a ban on single-use plastic bags around this same time.
Unfortunately, this period also brought rising rents, and so Fujino had to relocate again. This brought her to the Hudson Valley where inspiration continues to flow, but now from more natural surroundings. This can be seen in her ongoing Birds of the Hudson Valley collection of handmade stencil paintings.
“Its concept was to celebrate the local landscapes where nature, birds, and humans coexist and thrive,” Fujino says about this collection. “It features nature spots, historic sites and small businesses here in the Hudson Valley along with birds I saw at each spot.” Locations that she drew inspiration from are noted specifically with each piece and include some managed by Scenic Hudson, such as the Falling Waters Preserve in Ulster County.
Another collection of stencil paintings in Fujino’s portfolio is titled Colors of the Hudson Valley. These are painted with natural pigments extracted from non-native plants collected locally. Fujino works closely with the Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program in Columbia County to identify and collect the plants used to make the pigments.
When discussing this collection, she makes an important distinction between “non-native” and “invasive” plants. This holds meaning for her as a Japanese-born U.S. citizen striving for identity. “Non-human things are also in that tension between ‘how do you find your place’ and ‘how do you find your role’ in this ecosystem that’s not native to you,” Fujino says. “So, that whole theme felt very personal to me as an immigrant.”
Fujino has also found creative expression in other media, including audio. And as with much of her stencil work, birds are the inspiration. Every fourth Saturday of the month at 11 a.m., she can be heard on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7 FM in a podcast program she calls Beakuency: Meet Bird People in Columbia County! There, she hosts interviews with experts and enthusiasts tied to the Hudson Valley’s birding community, of which she is also an active member. The program also features a collage of bird-inspired music and sounds.
Expanding on her Beakuency radio program, Fujino is now launching an art zine with the same title. The zine includes words from past guests interviewed on her radio program, now physically preserved on paper. Its informative text is complemented by her beautiful stencil work throughout the pages, which Fujino hopes will attract the attention of those outside the birding community. “Art can contribute sort of an invitation to people who may not have any ideas about birds or bird conservation,” she says. “I want to reach out to people who are not in it yet, and I think art makes bridges in that kind of situation.”
The first volume of the Beakuency art zine began being distributed at libraries in Columbia County in fall 2025, and Fujino hopes to expand it eventually to other libraries throughout the Hudson Valley as she adds new volumes.
