Michiko Olson

Artist Bio:

Michiko Olson grew up in a small Japanese village and as a child loved to pick flowers and catch insects. Nature always surprised her with its unbelievable colors and shapes. As a young woman, she loved to travel and meet people both old and young. She enjoyed learning about other cultures.

She moved to Tokyo and graduated from Tokyo Gakugei University in Japan with a BA in Early Childhood Education. She was also trained as a Japanese language teacher. When she moved to United States, she took classes at Parsons School of Design in NY to study how to write and illustrate children’s books.

Michiko is now married and a mother of three children. She still loves to experience the things that intrigued her when she was young. They are the subject matter of her artwork. Her artwork is also influenced by her experiences living in both Japanese and American culture.

Michiko creates a type of artwork, called Kirie, which means cutting picture. In the simplest form of Kirie, she cuts a contiguous image on a single sheet of rice paper and adds color by pasting dyed rice paper to the back of the image. Her first Kirie work was selected as a winner of the Japanese National Kirie Contest. She was selected to join the EDGE program by Artist Trust in Seattle. Her work can be seen at Bainbridge Arts and Craft. She currently serves as a board of director of Bainbridge Arts and Humanities Council.