Artist Spotlight-Japanese paper-doll artist Maki Hino.

I want to start sharing some of my favorite living artists for you to enjoy. Some of these amazing folks I collect from, some I just admire from afar and fangirl-out while stalking them online. This week I'd like to introduce Japanese paper-doll artist Maki Hino.

 Artist Maki Hino is from Japan and was born in Nagano Prefecture. She started out as a doll-maker in 1993, originally studying ball-jointed dolls and then creating her figures out of clay and seashells.
In 2010 Hino began the new adventure of making 2-D dolls using acrylic paint on paper to tell these tiny flat stories filled with nostalgia and wonder.
Sometimes her narrative cutouts are presented framed, sometimes mounted direct to the wall, creating a tiny fanciful installation that could be mounted anywhere you need them to inspire you.

I adore the mix of sweet and strange she evokes with her work, and naturally the fact that many of her pieces have a cat lurking around somewhere charmed me right away.
In fact, on her website there is a blog (last updated 2 years ago) that is largely filled with heartfelt commentary about the various cats in her life, though it is all in Japanese, so you'll have to hit up the google translate to mine those little gems.
Her website is called "Kitchen", which confounded me at first, but I discovered that she originally made all her dolls in the corner of her kitchen before she had studio space in her life. :)
I hope you enjoyed her work, I'll share another artist with you sometime next month.
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