Island Profile: Hirotsugu Aoki, an artist afoot

Last spring, a man commenced to walk the roads of Shelter Island every day. Accompanied by a beautiful brown dog, he carried a camera. Hirotsugu Aoki, (everyone, including his wife calls him Aoki) follows a daily ritual — walk seven miles, and take pictures. Soon he noticed that he had become an object of curiosity,

“There are not too many little Japanese guys around here,” he said.

Last week, Aoki agreed to sit for a few minutes outside STARs Café and tell me who he is and how he got here.

He was frequently interrupted to greet friends and allow Finnegan (the aforementioned beautiful, brown dog) to accept high-value treats. 

Aoki was born in Yokohama in 1943, the fourth of five children. His parents were doctors.  A traffic accident when he was 15 left him hospitalized with a brain injury.

“I heard the doctor saying to my mother that he did not think I was going to make it,” he said. “Somehow I survived, but I stopped growing.”

He graduated from high school, but admits he didn’t go much in the last year, in part due to the lingering effects of his brain injury. “I realized how fragile and unreal life is, and that I could be gone forever,” he said. “I think that’s why I stopped going to school.”

Trained as a painter after seeing a show in Tokyo of contemporary art including paintings by Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Josef Albers, he decided to move to New York in 1967 to pursue his interest in avant-garde art.

“At that time in New York, you didn’t have to do much to support yourself,” he said. Working as a carpenter, he painted and hung out with a lot of other poor artists, some of whom, such as the conceptual artist On Kawara and the video artist Nam June Paik, later became famous.

“I was a hippie,” Aoki said. 

In 1969, living in an unheated loft with winter coming on, Aoki met Teresa O’Connor, a professor at CUNY. “I needed a girlfriend with a nice warm apartment,” he said. “And I needed to learn English, and she was an English professor.”

They married in 1972.

A commercial photographer asked him to construct a prop for a photo shoot, and impressed with how much money he was paid, Aoki decided making models for commercial photographers was a good way to make a living.

In 1974, he was one of a group of artists who bought 132 Greene Street, a 19th-century cast iron loft building in SoHo. He took an entire floor of the empty warehouse — 3,000 square feet, as his studio and home.

“I had to make it livable and I needed a lot of money for lumber,” he remembered. “So, it was good that I got into model making.”

Aoki’s and Teresa’s son Owen was born in 1981. Eight years later, they adopted a boy they named Siever. Their third child is Leilei, who Teresa met and fell in love with in China. Leilei became their daughter three years after Siever arrived.

Today, Owen works for a financial company and lives in Singapore, and Siever and Leilei came to Shelter Island from New York with Aoki and Teresa in April.

Aoki’s side of the family still lives in Japan, including his mother, who is 107. “I think she’s tired of living, but she’s OK,” he said. “Every time I go to Japan, I say this is the last time.”

As his career developed, Aoki began to work in movies, where his designs and creations had to do things, like explode, or move across the sky. He began to design and direct his own special effects. In 1990, he worked on “Back to the Future … The Ride,” visualizing and designing the film effects for the wild ride in a flying DeLorean that thrilled visitors to the Universal Studios theme parks.

Aoki’s talents were in high demand, but 60 to 70 hours per week of work was ruining his health, and in the early 80s he was diagnosed with angina. He resolved to change his living habits by getting outdoors and out of the city on weekends.

He and Teresa had been regular visitors to her brother Jack O’Connor’s Shelter Island home but after his death in 1983, they decided to buy a house and land in the Catskills for weekends, which they later sold when the kids lost interest.

A second health scare in 2011 prompted Aoki to begin walking seven miles every day around his SoHo home. In April, with the virus raging in New York, they left SoHo with Siever and Leilei for Shelter Island, and in December they’ll move into a rented house owned by an old Shelter Island friend, Wendy Murdock. 

When Aoki began his long daily walks in April, he was one of very few pedestrians on the Island. “I took photographs of scenery at first and it was so boring,” he said. “As I got to know people, I could ask people to be in my picture.”  

Finnegan made many friends too, and Aoki took pictures of folks holding Finnegan’s leash. “Taking pictures is kind of a hobby but I really enjoy doing it. I just want to do it for myself, but I would like to be better,” he said. “I’m not a weird guy.”

The images of Shelter Island on Aoki’s Facebook page are luminous; a spacious, open-hearted take on the Island’s big skies, scenic corners and unusual architecture, starring the dogs and people who live here.

In Aoki’s eye, an abandoned boat in an untended lot is a still life. The hundreds of images he has posted are a portrait of an unpretentious place during a fraught time in its history.

He said, “Some people here have a lot of money, but there is less concern with social status than East Hampton. I like that very much.”

The O’Connor-Aoki family have been celebrating Thanksgiving in SoHo with at least 30 people for many years, a sort of friends and family pot luck. This year there will be just five around their Shelter Island table. Although they have been invited to join friends on the Island, they’re staying close.

Aoki said, “I’m enjoying my life, and I don’t want to make it any shorter.”

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you? A camera.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? I like the Heights because of the architecture.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? London.

What exasperates you? Mr. Trump.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? When Cristina Cosentino at the Sylvester Manor Farm told me I can just go in and walk around the farm. I didn’t know that.

Favorite movie or book? ‘The Deer Hunter.’

Favorite food? Sushi.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?  The painter, Vermeer.  

Most respected elected official, present or past? Mr. Obama.