Noriko Shinohara (born 1953 in Takaoka, Japan) is a

Japanese-American are Americans of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century; but, according to the 2000 census, they have declined in number to constitute the sixth largest Asi ...

multi-disciplinary fine artist based in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York. She is known for her semi-

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drawing and printmaking series "Cutie & Bullie". She has had several international gallery and museum exhibitions including in Tokyo, New York City, Dallas,

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, Ottawa and more. Shinohara and her husband, Ushio, are the subjects of a documentary film by Zachary Heinzerling called Cutie and the Boxer (2013).

Biography

Shinohara moved to New York City at the age of 19, in the early 1970s, in order to study art at the Art Students League of New York. A few months after arriving to the city, she met the artist Ushio who was 21 years her senior. Within the next few years they were married and together they had a son born in 1974, Alexander Kūkai Shinohara. In 2013, the couple and their son appeared in ''

Cutie and the Boxer ''Cutie and the Boxer'' is a 2013 American documentary film produced, shot, and directed by Zachary Heinzerling. The film focuses on the chaotic 40-year marriage of two artists, Noriko Shinohara and her husband the boxing painter Ushio, featu ...

'', a documentary about their art and family life directed by Zachary Heinzerling. The nickname "Cutie" started in 2002 at the age of 49, when Shinohara was wearing her hair in two braids and a young man on the street called out to her, "hey cutie". The nickname stuck after that event. She started creating the drawing series after complaining about her husband to a friend, who quipped back at her, that she should "punish him" as a

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would do. Finding this idea amusing, in 2003-2004 she started drawing images of Cutie punishing Bullie and sending them to her friend that had made the joke. Initially only Cutie was named in the drawings and it was formatted as six-frame comics, but by 2007 she named Bullie, and slowly it became a story about both Cutie and Bullie. In 1986, she held her first solo exhibition at the Cat Club in New York City. In 2016, she held a solo exhibition at the

Carleton University Carleton University is an English-language public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to serve returning Wo ...

Art Gallery in Ottawa,

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shinohara, Noriko 1953 births Artists from Brooklyn Manga artists American female comics artists Women manga artists Living people Japanese contemporary artists People from Toyama Prefecture Japanese emigrants to the United States