Hiroki Morinoue studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts, where he received his BFA degree. Morinoue spent time in Japan studying with a Master woodblock printer. The skills he acquired in this intense pursuit are evident in the direct, elegant, and fluid woodcuts and monotypes Morinoue has made at Shark’s.
In all of Morinoue’s work there is a compelling sense of place–the ocean shoreline, lava flows and Japanese gardens. He is a patient observer of nature, its rhythms, cycles and patterns, and these observations become poetic images in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics and prints.
Morinoue’s latest woodcut is Brazilian Rainforest. Morinoue first observed the Brazilian rainforest in 1997 when the exhibition he designed, The Kona Coffee Story: Along the Hawai’i Belt Road, was shown in Sâo Paulo.
In this new print, the artist poetically honors the rainforest in Brazil. The Amazon is home to an estimated 16,000 tree species. This rainforest is the world’s largest, but in the last 40 years at least 20% of it has been destroyed.
Hiroki Morinoue has shown widely in the United States and Japan. He has completed several major public art commissions, including projects at the Honolulu Public Library, and the Hawaii Convention Center. Morinoue’s work is represented in the collections of The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; The Honolulu Academy of Arts, The National Parks Collection, Maryland; Ueno No Mori Museum, Tokyo, and others.
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