Tag: drawing

Katsuya Terada Returns This Month to Complete His Live Drawing

Carol Cheh 2 Comments
Katsuya Terada at work in the JANM galleries. Photo by Carol Cheh.
Katsuya Terada at work in the JANM galleries. Photo by Carol Cheh.

 

Giant Robot Biennale 4 is a highly interactive show, with several features that invite viewer engagement on a more active level than usual. One of these features is the live, on-site creation of a major new work by Katsuya Terada.

Starting shortly before the exhibition opened in October, Terada spent several days working inside of a roped-off area in JANM’s lower-level galleries to create a new, two-part drawing from scratch. Visitors were able to watch him as he worked. The artist had to leave town before he could finish, but he plans to return later this month (after the 19th) to complete the piece in the gallery.

Katsuya Terada. Photo by Carol Cheh.
Katsuya Terada.
Photo by Carol Cheh.

The live drawing idea came from Eric Nakamura, curator of the show and founder of the Giant Robot empire. “Museums are typically filled with static objects,” he noted. “I wanted to present an interactive experience, where people could ask questions, and see what artists are like in person. It’s not everywhere that you can do this.” Nakamura gave Teraya no time limits, wanting him to produce a finished work that is suitable for framing.

So far the work is looking exquisitely finished right out of the gate. It does not yet have a title, but it does have a theme: masks. “I thought it would be interesting to draw a mask wearing a mask,” the artist says. Terada, who speaks very little English, spoke to me shortly before he left with the help of his friend and fellow exhibiting artist Yoskay Yamamoto, who served as translator.

I asked Terada to explain his process, which is organic rather than planned. “If I draw one line, that will tell me how to draw the next line,” he replied. “However, when I see the entire surface, and I start drawing one image, that will usually be the starting point, and from there I’m just trying to fill up the page without making mistakes—in composition, in choice of items to draw. I’m just making sure everything fits in the right way.”

Katsuya Terada. Photo by Carol Cheh.
Katsuya Terada. Photo by Carol Cheh.

 

Personally, I would find that process stressful. I asked him how he felt about that, and about having people watch him while he draws.

“It is stressful! But it’s like I’m challenging myself by being in that position,” Terada replied. “Having an audience can be a positive thing—it means that I have to work hard and I can’t slack off. But drawing itself is just enjoyable to me, with or without an audience.”

Terada will be back at JANM sometime after December 19th to complete his drawing. Keep your eyes on JANM’s Twitter feed and Facebook page to see when he’s in the gallery. Until then, you can come to the museum to view his progress to date.

Katsuya Terada's unfinished drawing, as he left it in October. The artist will return to JANM this month to complete the work. Photo by Carol Cheh.
Katsuya Terada’s unfinished drawing, as he left it in October. The artist will return to
JANM later this month to complete the work. Photo by Carol Cheh.

Estelle Ishigo Drawing from JANM Collection Featured in National Constitution Center Exhibition

Collections Management & Access Leave a comment
Ishigo-500px
Estelle Ishigo’s drawing All In One Room, as it was prepared by Collections Staff for travel to the National Constitution Center

The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia is currently featuring the drawing All In One Room by Estelle Ishigo in their permanent exhibition The Story of We, the People.  The drawing will be on display through November of 2014.

Estelle Peck Ishigo (1899-1990) is most well known as an artist who chronicled the experience at the Heart Mountain concentration camp.

Estelle Peck was born in Oakland in 1899 to parents of English, Dutch, French ancestry.  Her family moved to Los Angeles and Estelle attended the Otis Art Institute, where she met Arthur Ishigo (1902-1957), a San Francisco-born Nisei who was working as a chauffeur for California Lieutenant Governor Robert Kenny.  As anti-miscegenation laws at the time prohibited interracial couples from getting married, Peck and Ishigo took a trip across the border to Tijuana to be wed in 1928. Hoping for a career as an actor, Arthur worked as a janitor at Paramount Studios while Estelle worked as an art teacher.  Shunned by her family, the couple lived among the Japanese American community.

Estelle Ishigo (Gift of Mary Ruth Blackburn, Japanese American National Museum [2000.103.12])
Gift of Mary Ruth Blackburn, Japanese American National Museum [2000.103.12].
With the outbreak of World War II and the removal of all West Coast Japanese Americans to inland concentration camps, the couple faced a dilemma. As a Nisei, Arthur was required to be removed while his wife was not. Though he wanted her to stay behind, she accompanied her husband, first to the Pomona Assembly Center in California, and then to Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

Throughout the war years, Estelle drew, sketched, and painted what she saw, providing a valuable document of life in the American concentration camps. “Strange as it may sound, in this desolate, lonely place I felt accepted for the first time in my life,” she later wrote of her time at Heart Mountain. She and her husband remained at Heart Mountain in order to record the last days of the camp until it was officially closed. The Ishigos were given $25 and put on a train to the West Coast. “I felt as if I were part of a defeated Indian tribe,” she remembered later.

In 1990, filmmaker Steven Okazaki made a documentary of Estelle Ishigo’s life titled Days of Waiting. Estelle passed away before seeing the film, which went on to win an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Estelle Ishigo’s story and drawings comprise an important aspect of the permanent collection at the National Museum. The Estelle Ishigo Collection can be seen on the Museum’s website at:  janm.org/collections/estelle-ishigo-collection

Learn more about Estelle Ishigo on our Discover Nikkei website >>

Submitted by Margaret Zachow Wetherbee, Collections Manager

Save the Date: 2012 Gala Dinner

Vicky Murakami-Tsuda Leave a comment

We’ve already begun planning for next year’s Gala Dinner!

The 2012 Gala Dinner is set for Saturday, May 5. We’ll be back at the JW Mariott Hotel at L.A. Live.

Our staff is currently working to finalize ticket & sponsorship opportunities, so stay tuned for more info.

In the meantime, we’re excited to announce that Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. will once again be providing a Lexus for our Lexus Opportunity Drawing! This time, you’ll be able to win an all-new 2013 Lexus GS 450h hybrid!

The model is being redesigned for 2013. For those who know something about cars (not me!), it’s the world’s first premium performance sedan to be equipped with a V6 Atkinson cycle gas engine and two-motor hybrid system, in a front engine rear-wheel drive vehicle.

For a chance to win, tickets are $25 each, or 5 for $100 (buy 4, get 1 free!). For details, download the flier/form below.

Download the Opportunity Drawing form (PDF) >>

2013 Lexus GS 450h
2011 Lexus winner Karen Nakawatase with Tammie Kanda of Toyota

2011 Lexus Opportunity Drawing Winner!

Darryl Mori Leave a comment
Congratulations to Karen Nakawatase of Fountain Valley, CA, winner of the 2011 Lexus Opportunity Drawing! Nakawatase was the recipient of a new Lexus RX450h hybrid, courtesy of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. Her winning ticket was drawn on April 16, 2011, at the Japanese American National Museum’s annual Gala Dinner & Silent Auction in Los Angeles. Nakawatase (left) is pictured here with Tammie Kanda of Toyota (right).
2011 Lexus winner Karen Nakawatase with Tammie Kanda of Toyota
Photo by Nobuyuki Okada
Thank you to everyone who supported the drawing, which raised more than $120,000 in donations to support diversity education programs at the Japanese American National Museum.