Kristin believes that service is a crucial component of any career and has served in a variety of volunteer roles and on numerous nonprofit boards since 2001. She cites her nine years as Chair of the Board of Trustees of Haystack Mountain School of Craft as one of her most formative roles. In addition to serving as Secretary for the Board of the Hawai'i Artist Collaboration, Kristin is currently in her second term as Secretary of the Board of Directors of the American Craft Council (ACC).
Kristin Mitsu Shiga is a hapa metalsmith, educator and arts administrator who has played a variety of roles in the arts since 1992.
Throughout her career, Kristin’s desire to strike balance between her individual studio practice and working as part of a larger team allowed her to build an unusual skillset that includes everything from nonprofit arts administration and grantwriting to armature-building for stop-motion animation studios. She has worked nationally as Education Director for the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG), and regionally as VP of Continuing Education and Community Programs at Oregon College of Art & Craft, where she also finished her degree in Craft, with a focus on Metalsmithing, Book Arts and Furniture. Since 2020, Kristin has been focused on providing educational access to a diverse online community of artists and lifelong learners as the Virtual Program Director for Metalwerx in Waltham, Massachusetts.
From a long line of educators, Kristin is passionate about teaching and has had the opportunity to share with students at venues all over the US including Penland, Arrowmont and Haystack Mountain schools of craft. Her proudest achievements have been establishing nonprofit metalsmiting studios and programs throughout her 30-year career that continue today in New York (OCM BOCES), Oregon (Multnomah Arts Center), and Hawai’i (Donkey Mill Arts Center).
As a maker, Kristin pursues projects that tell a story and actively engage her audience. Her solo work centers around one-of-a-kind wearable art and holloware with an aesthetic that has been described as a “marriage between her Japanese heritage and influences from her early explorations in architecture and the Modernist design movement.” Her ongoing series, “Unfinished, Damaged & Broken” explores the significance of age and wear on common objects while protecting, bolstering or celebrating their hard-won imperfections. Both her life and studio practice have been deeply inspired by her participation in various artist collaborations, including the EMMA International Collaboration in Canada, CollaboratioNZ in New Zealand and of course, the Hawai‘i Artist Collaboration.
Kristin has shown her work internationally, and is included in several notable collections, including the Kamm Artful Teapot Collection and the Permanent Collection of the White House. You will find her work published in numerous books and magazines, including Art Jewelry Today, The Art of Enameling, Metalsmith’s 2017 Exhibition in Print, and several of Lark’s 500 Series books. Learn more about Kristin’s past work on Oregon Artbeat (segment originally aired in 2010).
