Hiroko Otani was born and grew up in Tokyo, Japan. She studied early childhood education at and became a preschool teacher.
Hiroko taught over 12 years at several private early childhood education institutions in Japan and America. Through teaching she developed unique teaching methods with arts disciplines (modern & traditional Japanese crafts, music, dance etc.). After a long time experience as a teacher, she moved on to alternative teaching style as a teaching artist. She has worked with an agency to develop and perform sustainable education workshops. Hiroko started to perform her Japanese folk arts and culture workshops at local communities in 2010.
Hiroko had trainings & experiences teaching students with disabilities.
When Hiroko create her pieces, her experience (as an educator), her ethnicity (as an Asian), her interest (for creativity and originality), integrate naturally. She is creating her piece from the heart. Hiroko focused on the messages she would like to send to the universe, the voice she hears from inside of her.
My First real introduction to art was a water color class I took in 10th grade in Buffalo, NY. My teacher, Ed Swanecamp, was the star pupil of Charles Bircwhfield. Mr. Swanecamp was an accomplished artist, and instrument of wonder and inspiration. I began to paint.
At SUNY Binghamton, I was lucky enough to have an equally great instructor, Angelo Ippolito, one of the abstract expressionists, for my four years of College. I was initiated, I experienced the magnificent and wonderful with color, light and line.
After undergraduate, I focused all my time and energy on painting. I would work for a few months, save up money, then quit and paint as long as I could. I enrolled in night class at Boston Museum School, so I could use their printmaking facilities. I painted and printed as much as was physically possible.
After my loft eviction in Boston, I moved to NYC where I developed another raw loft and got a part time job, so I could paint. After eviction from that loft, I build another loft and continued to work. I joined Bob Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop on 17th street, so I could print, paying my way by fixing things around the shop.
I learned contracting from developing lofts and became able to sustain myself and art with part time labor; always one step ahead bill collectors; always trying to open the door to full time, 100% creative activity, a door that still remains only partly open for me.
In the 90's I earned my MFA from Pratt Institute, (Suma Cum Laude). I joined SAGA and received a number of awards from them. I participated in many shows including a One Man Show in SOHO at Exhibit A Gallery in 1999. I had some prints accepted into Library of Congress, and reasonable success working with corporate art galleries as well as having some paintings appear in publications and Brooklyn Museum. I remained at Pratt Institute for another 8 years as an alumni artist, taking the advantage of their printmaking facilities.
I now have a small studio where I continue to discover and invent on canvas, paper, and wood. I again have a part time labor job, and devote most of my time to the most wonderful thing on earth; making pictures.