We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Harumo Sato a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Harumo, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

For as long as I can remember I have always had a passion for making things. While I did not have any artists within my family, I wanted to be an artist. My family and I had a complicated relationship. I was eager to find a way to be independent when I was a teenager. I tried a few different career paths to achieve financial independence, and I feel that I didn’t have the ability to take the risk to fully become an artist untilI simply couldn’t avoid it any longer.

When I was 23 years old, my dominant arm, my right arm, suddenly became paralyzed. I couldn’t feel pressure, temperature, nor sense of pain. Doctors could not diagnose my problem and could not provide a cure. Around that time, I had just started working at an advertisement agency in Japan.

Luckily, I was able to take a medical leave from the company, and moved to my parent’s house because I couldn’t take care of myself anymore. In the middle of the search for a cure, I visited my old art teacher, who had previously suffered from a stroke since I had taken classes as a kid. He told me that his doctor gave up on him, but he didn’t give up on himself. After serious independent study and a lot of trial and error, he recovered.

In his recovered state, he took me as his apprentice, teaching me how to do rehabilitation through making art. My first assignment was to draw a line with my paralyzed hand. My teacher put a pencil between my cold unresponsive fingers and wrapped them with blue tape. “Draw!” He said, but obviously my blue tape wrapped hand couldn’t move by itself, so I pushed and dragged it with my other hand to draw the awkward line.

I felt as though I had the worst luck. Though, shortly after these feelings had come, one of the biggest earthquakes in the history of Japan occured. The nuclear power plant in Fukushima was completely destroyed by the tsunami and began leaking radioactive materials into the environment. My parents’ house stands in a neighborhood prefecture from Fukushima. With everything shaken up, buildings, houses, and temples were crushed. Many people died within a short amount of time. I felt ashamed to think that I was so unlucky due to my arm.

Simply living after the disaster was astonishingly lucky. One of the few things I could do with one arm was drawing. While we were uncertain and worried about the effects of the earthquake and nuclear disaster, I decided I will find a way to contribute to society with my love of drawing.

Two years later, I decided to come to the United States to go to art school, while waiting for my arm to fully recover.

In a quick summary, my arm gradually recovered during my school year, and I was lucky to meet with my future husband during a class.
I got my first art residency right after graduation, and gradually started figuring out what I want to do in the art world.

Harumo, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a visual artist. My main practice is painting and public art.

In my studio, I paint a lot of colorful animals and geometric shaped people. Since COVID, I have grown interested in physical tangibility and sustainability, so I started making “2.5” dimensional paintings using multi media like used oil pastel, sumi ink, gold foil, plastic containers, terracotta clay, scrap wood, and beeswax.

Outside of my studio, I create hand painted murals and installations. Some of the clients I have worked with are Facebook (now Meta), Target, University at Buffalo, MidPen Housing etc.
I am a daughter from a historian family, so I value history and research a lot before I start moving my hands. I enjoy onsite visits, walk around the area, and talk with people who carry the local history to share it in my work. My hope is that my work will become a point of connection between history and people passing by. It is important for me to create artwork which speaks not only to our own community members but also to visitors so that they can love land and will be more likely to pass their experience with it to the next generation.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

To provide food for my table while living in California, I used to make illustrations and sell them at local fairs and Comicon. But my historian blood was not content with that job. I wanted to do something more meaningful to the community, but I didn’t know what.

Luckily, One day, I was offered to make a 24’x50′ mural for PowWow San Jose in 2018 (later renamed SJWalls). I didn’t have any prior experience making a large scale mural, but I created sketches based on the history and population of that area. I showed my sketch and asked for feedback from several friends who live there to refine my concept.

Due to the festival schedule, I needed to finish it within seven days. It was a total hustle. First day, I fell asleep right after I was away from the wall. Using a scissor lift drained my energy faster than I had imagined.

In the beginning, the local neighbors were not sure why I was painting the mural in their community. But gradually, day by day they saw the progress of my mural, they started feeling excited. They even started feeding me yummy local food. At the end, we hugged each other, and since then, they are very rigorous to keep my mural away from vandalization.

I learned the power of public art and was really drawn into it. I received more commissions since then, and I am so grateful that public art is a big part of my creative output.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The definition of hard work can be different depending on the circumstance and it is ok not to physically make things every day.

I am used to long hours of physically demanding labor, working until midnight quite often. Making art is my passion, and I enjoyed a quiet flow time.

Soon, my personal “free time/work time” upended, when my child was born in 2020. My creative schedule was forced to change significantly. Now at two years old, when my son is sick and cannot go to daycare, It is necessary that I take care of him during the day. This means my art practice has significantly become unpredictable and thus has shrunk in output. It is much harder to have mental flow during my disjointed work time.

In the beginning (or even sometime now), I was so frustrated that I couldn’t have enough time in my studio. I also didn’t know how to deal with something, or someone, that I don’t have control of: like my child’s health. Similar to how you cannot control the weather, I cannot predict when my child will get a cold and when he will recover. My structured schedule suddenly disappeared, and I was scared.

Gradually, I started learning to say no to projects which are not aligned to my mission and passion. My schedule became more loose gradually so that I have enough time to work for not only a commission project but also my personal project.

I recently learned when I am so close to burn out, I must stop working and take a break: watching movies, reading books, soaking in the tub until I accumulate energy again.

Our life is like a wave, up and down. We don’t need to be always up.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.harumosato.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harumosato/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/harumosato.painting/

Image Credits
For the murals and studio shot, Lanny Nguyen.