About the Artist


Toki Oshima lives with her husband John Pranio and 2 sons Sean and Jamie on a dirt road in North Whitefield Maine. She arrived in Maine by way of Alaska following a childhood in the outskirts of Boston. Her Dad is American, born to Japanese parents, her Mother was a bio-dynamic herb farmer, who's heritage goes back to the Mayflower. Toki's first art school was in Halifax, NS. for 2« years studying ceramics. She drifted away from the city and spent 8 years in Alaska, enjoying playing old time music, traveling and gardening, canoing on the Yukon River then deciding to return east to return to art school, this time in Portland, Maine. During the summer of 1988, Toki met her husband while they were both attending a fiddle and dance camp in Ashoken, NY. They decided to continue to make music together and moved into a small cabin in North Whitefield.

     She finished her degree in graphic design and in 1990, working out of a studio room in a friends home began her note card business. She joined the Damariscotta, ME farmers market, and every week she showed up with her first 20 designs. She worked as the illustrator for the exciting new newspaper called the Casco Bay Weekly for five years, illustrating both covers and articles, and little art for the community listings which the editor favored ala "New Yorker Magazine". Having grown up on that magazine, it was a great match. From there she began to freelance and received an AP award while at the Biddeford Journal Tribune, and continues today as an illustrator for MOFGA (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association), the largest organic organization in the country. Meanwhile the family grew as the card business grew. Her craft fair booth created by Joe Stanley consists of a beautiful wall of cards with 36 spaces and 36 shelves. Incorporated into the booth is a secret nap area used when the boys were babies — which still gets used today, during a busy fair. Toki Cards has been a regular at the Common Ground Country Fair, Unity, ME in Sept. as well as at the MECA Holiday sale historically the first of Dec.

    Now a Nursery Teacher at the Ashwood Waldorf School in Rockport, ME, Toki is engaged in music and art in everything she does!

     Her use of scratchboard, in which ink is applied to a special clay coated paper, when removed with a sharp tool, brings a liveliness and energy to her subjects. Her designs reflect her pleasure in the details of country life & frequently include people and animals together in happy celebration. The tone of her work is warm and funny, invariably "up", which is, in fact, a lot like Toki herself.

Excerpted from Lynn Allens' article entitled "Who is Toki?" MOFGA, updated by T. Oshima