Takayo Noda

Takayo Noda is a collage artist, printmaker, writer, and illustrator. She was born in Tokyo, Japan, and studied at Gakushuin University in Tokyo. She moved to New York City with her then husband in 1961 and has lived there since. She, however, travels back to Japan regularly.

She devoted most of her time as a wife and mother until her son became a high school student. However, the art training she had in Japan helped her to work for Women's Day magazine as a freelance crafts designer. Occasionally, she had the opportunity to exhibit her collages at one of the local galleries in the West Village during those years.

It was her long-time dream to become an artist since she was very young but she felt the art training she had had in Japan was not good enough to advance her career in art; hence she wanted to have further training to cultivate her artistic mind and develop more skill to reach a true professional level. Therefore, it was a natural progression for her to go back to school to pursue art in depth, as soon as her son became old enough. She studied with Robert Conover at The New School for Social Research and Michael Ponce de Leon, Seong Moy, and Leo Manso at the Art Students League. She started showing her work publicly in 1981 and has received numerous awards.