©1992 - 2008 MARI KONO
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Bio
Mari Kono is a collage artist born and raised in Los Angeles, California. After a childhood visit to her grandparents’ home in Tokyo, she found some wooden storage boxes her mother had covered with colorful paper clippings. This discovery prompted Kono to explore the joy of cutting out, combining and reconfiguring images to create new meanings.
Kono studied at the San Francisco Art Institute under Linda Connor, a renowned photographer of mystical places, who encouraged her to find an artistic voice by reaching deeper into personal and spiritual experiences. Kono graduated from SFAI with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1991.
Kono has exhibited photographs and collages at museums and galleries across the U.S., including the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the San Jose Museum of Contemporary Art, Spirit Square in Charlotte, North Carolina, 5501 Columbia Art Center in Dallas, Texas and Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. She has taken her art on the road, improvising manually projected images in tandem with live music. In 2000, she joined bands Secret Chiefs 3 (featuring Trey Spruance, of Mr. Bungle) and Estradasphere on their tour of the U.S.
Kono is currently completing a book project with writer/designer Kimberly Jordan that will include digitally collaged fantasy portraits of artists Annie Sprinkle and Vaginal Davis.