Indebted to all the wonderful teachers along the way and the library system. Began professional life in high school teaching and maintaining decorative and handbuilt ceramics studio in high school. Able to work intensively with Kamijo Sensei on books on Brush Calligraphy (unpublished). Introduced by Japanese professors and friends to art behind the scenes; permitted to know many aspects of the culture from the inside. Training in yoga, esoteric Buddhist practice, Zen and a multitude of other teachings in which vision, art, and a different sensitivity to space and artistic expression are central Introduction to the world of dance through teachers and friends. Trained by Nature in every perceivable aspect: certain stones, trees, upward leading footpaths, brooks, shafts of light through early spring branches, bamboo groves, breezes, frogs, stick formations, insects, twisted old leaves with holes, the woods and the city, cats, dogs, woodchucks, raccoons, squirrels, and the other animals in one’s life, and all they have to say, or not say.

For 6 of the 8 years that prize-winning artist Sharon Nakazato lived in Japan she studied Japanese Brush Calligraphy intensively with celebrated contemporary master Shinzan Kamijo. She holds a license to teach from the Japan Calligraphic Arts Association of Tokyo. While continuing on her “path of the Oriental Brush,” in recent years Nakazato has revisited her western art background and is now exploring an expansive range of mixed media, some incorporating Asian calligraphy and all drawing on years of experience with Eastern brush, inks, and space.

Nakazato has exhibited widely from Tokyo to Colorado to Pennsylvania to New York, including one-woman shows in NYC, the Seattle area, Putnam County, and Ridgefield, CT. She holds a BA and MA from the U of Michigan, with minors in art history, and did extensive graduate course work in Japan at Tokyo and Sophia Universities. An ongoing student of Japanese culture, she has lectured and published in both Japanese and English and co-founded and serves as Director of the Yasuragi Japan Arts Center, presenting programs and exhibits and teaching Japanese language and Brush Calligraphy. In 2006 the “Woodstock School of Art Printing Cabal” opened a whole new world of art to pursue, and in 2007 she was invited to participate in the BAU “Fresh Ink” Printing Festival in Beacon, NY. She continues to combine an ever-widening variety of media in a distinctly personal expression, and in addition to offering classes and workshops is now exhibiting by invitation throughout the tri-county area.

Sharon Nakazato offers ongoing classes and workshops in:

Japanese and Chinese Brush Calligraphy

General Introduction to the Oriental Brush

Japanese Language, Reading, Writing, Speaking, Translation

Japanese Culture through the Arts: A Hands-on Approach

Finding the Artist Within You

Haiku and Japanese Paper Arts

Shodo (The Way of the Brush) for Personal Meditation.

Coming Soon!

Sharon Nakazato turns her eye to the land of the Rising Sun as she draws from her varied and unique combination of Asian and contemporary American sensibilities. The works, sometimes abstract and sometimes ironic- as they reference mythological and totemic symbols, are rendered in an array of mixed media and disciplines from painting to print and collage. Nakazato’s artwork, the colorful, intellectual, collision of her training in Japanese Chinese brush calligraphy as filtered through western ethos, is an exciting distillation of cherished disciplines and joyful abandon.

As always, this event is FREE and open to the public.