Nikiko Masumoto
nikmasu@gmail.com
Farmer. Artist. Community Leader.
Biography
Nikiko Masumoto first learned to love food as a young child slurping the nectar of overripe organic peaches on the Masumoto Family Farm. Since then, she has never missed a harvest.
Farmer, artist, and leader, Nikiko works alongside her father to raise organic peaches, nectarines and grapes. She hopes to add another generation’s voice to the story of the Masumoto Family Farm. She calls herself an “agrarian artists” cultivating the richness of life in the Central Valley through farming, food, stories, art, & community. For her, being a farmer is growing embodied, aesthetic, and cultural experience. Her creative practices are rooted in place, community, and storytelling. Since finishing graduate school, she has coordinated several creative projects at the intersection of food, place, and storytelling. Her intellectual & artistic curiosities continue to inspire creations and inquiries into community engaged art-making, place, civic practice, justice and healing.
Education
- Masters of Arts, Theater with a Concentration in Performance as Public Practice, University of Texas, Austin (2011)
- Bachelor of Arts, (Highest Honors) Gender and Women’s Studies, University of California, Berkeley (2007)
Farming
- Organic farmer at the Masumoto Family Farm, apprenticing with her father, a life working from dirt to digital media (birth – present, full time 2011 – present)
- Co-author of Changing Season (Heyday Press 2016) The Perfect Peach: Recipes and Stories from the Masumoto Family Farm (Ten Speed Press 2013)
- Media coverage of work:
- Documentary film “Changing Season: On the Masumoto Family Farm” debuts 2015, produced by Center for Asian American Media
- NPR piece by Dan Charles, “The Family Peach Farm that became a Symbol of the Food Revolution“
- Civil Eats by Steve Holt, “How Buying Smaller Fruit Could Save California’s Drought-Stricken Family Farms“
- BBC by Peter Day, “The Small Fruit with a Big Flavour“
Artistic Practice
- Creative Community Fellow, part of a 9-month online program of National Arts Strategies for creative entrepreneurs using arts and creativity to tackle community challenges (June 2015 – March 2016)
- Artist, Catalyst Initiative, a pilot project of The Center for Performance and Civic Practice, Cohort 1, creating partnership work between artists and community partners to address a community need through arts-based practice, partnership with Center for Land-Based Learning focusing on hunger / food access (2014)
- Performance Artist & Producer, “What We Could Carry,” a one-woman show about Japanese American collective memory (2011 – 2014)
- Founder, Valley Storytellers Project, a multi-disciplinary approach to empowering people of the Central Valley to tell their stories (2011 – present)
Community Leadership
- Board of Directors, Alliance for California Traditional Arts, (joined 2015)
- Western States Arts Federation, Board of Trustees (2015-2018)
- Advisory Board, College of Arts & Humanities, California State University at Fresno (2014-2017)
- Western States Arts Federation Emerging Leaders of Color professional development program (fall 2014)
- Fresno Regional Foundation, Arts & Culture Grant Committee (2013 – 2016)
- Advisory Board, Valley Public Radio (2013 – present)
- Community Artist partner, Cornerstone Theater Company (2011 – 2015)
- Board of Directors, Central California Asian Pacific Women (2013 – 2014)
- Board of Directors, Pesticide Action Network of North America (2007-2008)
Awards & Recognition
- Fellowship, Future for Good at Institute for the Future (2016)
- Food & Wine and Fortune’s list of The Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink (2015)
- Food Tank’s list of 30 Women Under 30 Changing Food (2015)
- Cornerstone Theater Company, Bridge Award (2014)
- USA Today, top 10 summer cookbooks (2013)
- Oprah’s top 5 summer cookbooks (2013)
Samples of Work
- Speaker at TEDxManhattan on “Changing the Way We Eat” (March 2015), title “Reigniting the Soul of Farming” “What We Could Carry”
- Media coverage of Valley Storytellers Project – Hunger Stories
- Guest appearance in “Edible Education 101” a class instructed by Garrison Sposito and co-hosted by Bob Hass (March 2015)
- Digital Archive of 2013 “Passages / Home: A Central Valley art-guided bus Tour” Performance & Farming
- Article in HowlRound, online theater publication “Farming as Artistic Practice”
