Kristin Grahn Kyono is a Bay Area-based mixed media artist whose work explores the visual complexity of urban life — where human-made structures, cultural histories, and the natural world collide. Working primarily in painting and printmaking, she creates layered, textural compositions inspired by signage, architecture, and the shifting aesthetics of city environments.

Kyono’s perspective is shaped by a life rooted in cultural fusion: raised in a Swedish-American family in Seattle and married into a Japanese-American family in San Francisco, she brings a nuanced lens to the interplay of identity, place, and visual language. Her work reflects this hybridity, capturing the contrasts and harmonies found in contemporary metropolitan life.

Over the past two decades, Kyono has exhibited widely throughout the Bay Area, with group shows at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, SOMArts, O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, 111 Minna, and California Modern Gallery. Her solo exhibitions include the Henry Gifford Hardy Gallery and Thirsty Bear Brewery in San Francisco. Her work has also been featured in American Art Collector and commissioned by corporate and hospitality clients such as the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco and Dubai.

She holds an M.F.A. from the Academy of Art University and a B.A. in Studio Art and Sociology from Whitman College. Alongside her studio practice, Kyono enjoys mentoring emerging artists. She teaches at the U.C. Berkeley Art Studio and in the Mount Diablo School District, and supports student printmakers as a studio monitor at Diablo Valley College.