• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Karin Mori

Paintings & mixed media drawings

  • Home
  • About
    • Statement
    • Bio
  • Themes
    • Crystal City
    • Pearl & Stone
    • Ka’iulani
    • Kū
    • Island
    • Mer
  • Hello

Bio

About Me

I was born in Hawaii and grew up in Nu’uanu Valley, which is in Honolulu, on the island of O’ahu.

Members of my father’s family immigrated from Japan to Hawaii four generations back, and my mother’s family relocated from Germany and Europe to North America in the late 1800’s.  

pauahi crater (5)_w
Pauahi Crater, Volcanoes National Park, Hawai'i

I spent much of my childhood, and continued throughout adulthood, to explore the forests and mountains of O’ahu and the Big Island of Hawai’i. From older generations and hiking companions I learned facts and fictions about the flora, fauna and geography of the islands. As a teenager I spent summers working in the volcano area of the Big Island and this experience has had a profound influence on my later work as an artist.

After attending university in California and Iowa, I moved to England to teach fine art, and was subsequently involved in setting up Phoenix Arts Association (now Phoenix Art Space) in Brighton, where I currently have a studio and was until March 2020 running the main gallery exhibitions programme.  

I have continued to travel ‘home’ from England to Hawaii as much as possible, and in doing so I am able to observe the subtle and dramatic changes within this unique place over a lifetime. Although separated in time and space from my formative years, the distance between my two dwelling places serves to intensify and distil certain memories in a way that nourishes my art.

Much of my autobiography (fact and fiction) can be found in the artwork. 

 

Selected Exhibitions & Projects

The Leaping Place (installation), Pu’u-Ohia, Honolulu, 2016

A Princess in Hove, drawings for film by Jane Couldry, Hove Museum, UK, 2015

32 Paintings, Phoenix Brighton, 2013

Luakaha (painting installation), Nu’uanu, Honolulu, 2008

Reunion, Rochester Gallery, Rochester, Kent, UK, 2006

The Contemporary Museum at First Hawaiian Center Tenth Anniversary Exhibition, Honolulu, 2006

Draw: Recent Work by Hal Lum and Karin Mori, The Contemporary Museum at FirstHawaiian Center, Honolulu, 2005


Related Experience

Artistic Programme Manager, Phoenix Art Space (2009 - March 2020)

Founder member, senior management team, Phoenix Brighton. Established the gallery and education programmes for the charity and developed a year round programme of curated exhibitions (as project manager, producer and/or curator) 1992 onward.

Press & Release: Devised, curated, project managed a series of immersive international artist books exhibitions for Phoenix Brighton, in collaboration with Ben Thomson. 

Press & Release 2008, 2013, 2016

Assistant Professor of Art, New England College, Arundel UK/Henniker New Hampshire, USA, 1989-92


Education

University of Sussex, Post Graduate Diploma in Arts Management, 1998

The University of Iowa, MA, MFA in Painting and Drawing, 1988/89

University of California at Santa Cruz, BA Fine Art, 1986

University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1980 - 81