Distillations: Meditations on the Japanese American Experience

An Exhibition by Four Japanese American Women Artists:

Reiko Fujii, Lucien Kubo, Shizue Seigel, Judy Shintani

Exhibition: August 17 - September 18

Mon. - Fri. 11 am - 5 pm, Sat. Noon - 5 pm

Reception: August 21, Saturday, 6 - 9 pm

Arts & Consciousness Gallery, John F. Kennedy University 

2956 San Pablo Avenue, Second Floor, Berkeley, California

510.647.2041

Over seventy artworks by Reiko Fujii, Lucien Kubo, Shizue Seigel and Judy Shintani. Over seventy artworks by Reiko Fujii, Lucien Kubo, Shizue Seigel and Judy Shintani. Fujii’s intricate glass kimonos, Kubo’s richly textural shadowboxes, Seigel’s vibrant paintings and photocollages, and Shintani’s resonant found-object installations reflect deeply upon the Japanese American experience. The art arises from the strength of the immigrant Issei, the incarceration experiences of the Nisei, and the artists’ personal journeys of discovery and identity as third generation Sansei.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 74-page, four-color catalog with a preface by art historian Margo Machida and introduction by Betty Kano, co-sponsored by the Asian American Women Artists Association.

Events  (free and open to the public except where noted):

Saturday, August 21

Artists’ Panel Discussion, 4 - 6 pm

RECEPTION, 6 - 9 pm

August 28, Saturday, 2 - 4 pm.   Intergenerational Legacies - Hybridity in an Evolving California. Interactive slide talk by artist and author Shizue Seigel. What are the mythologies and the untold secrets in our family histories? How have our stories been shaped by larger socio-political forces? What values or attitudes do we consciously (or unconsciously) carry?  With minorities now the majority in California, how can our diverse stories enlarge the dominant perspective?

August 29, Sunday, 1 - 4:30 pm.  Art Making Workshop: Honoring Ancestors through Art

Tell your family stories through writing, painting, and collage. Facilitated by Judy Shintani, JFKU Arts & Consciousness Alumna.  Fee: $25. RSVP: judyshintani@yahoo.com

September 18, Sunday, 3 - 4:30 pm. Multi-Media Performance: 

Grandmothers from Far Away Lands, Stories about Internment, The Egg House Wall, The Farm, and The Glass Kimono

Performed by Reiko Fujii, Judy Shintani, and Lisa Petrides. Following the performance, there will be an opportunity to meet the artists and ask questions.

Directions to the Arts & Consciousness Gallery from I-80, take Ashby exit and turn left into the parking lot at Ashby Plaza Clock Tower (just west of San Pablo Ave). Drive towards the water tower and look to right for signs to JFKU Arts Annex (loading dock B). The gallery is located on the 2nd floor. For special assistance with disabilities, call 925-969-3362.

About the Artists

Reiko Fujii documents and preserves everyday memories of the past and present.  Through her art, ordinary people symbolize universal heroes and everyday activities are perceived as rituals that contribute to the wholeness of peoples’ lives. She expresses her personal, political and historical views about the Japanese American experience by intermingling short performances, video, installations, fused glass sculptures, and handmade books.   

Lucien Kubo thinks of her art as philosophical narratives.  She is sorting out how she feels about humanity and the world around her and is inspired by her life experiences and involvement with community and global issues.  Lucien takes found objects, recycled materials, photographs, paintings and various art mediumsto create assemblages and mixed-media art pieces. These evoke memories of past experiences, current events and a sense of shared history, all presented in a contemporary manner.

Shizue Seigel is a writer and artist who seeks to inspire compassion and connection by illuminating the overlooked and unseen within ourselves and in others—particularly how we are shaped by race, gender, religion, culture and history. She is the author of In Good Conscience: Supporting Japanese Americans during the Internment.

Judy Shintani focuses on remembrance, connection, and storytelling. Her family’s stories and Japanese heritage are important areas of richness. She creates installations and sculptures with assembled found and natural materials to explore social, historical, and cultural issues. Often her work h

as an interactive component allowing viewers to discover and respond.

For more information: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JAArtists

shiz1@mindspring.com or call (415) 221-0487

Distillations: Meditations on the Japanese American Experience

Arts & Consciousness Gallery, John F. Kennedy University
August 17-September 18. Reception: August 21, 6-9pm
Last fall, after meeting other Japanese American Sansei artists through the Asian American Women's Artists’ Association, I suggested that we join forces for a group show. Reiko Fujii, Lucien Kubo, Judy Shintani and I share the same heritage from different vantage points. We work in a variety of media and techniques to express the rich complexities of past and present, legacy and duty, history and secrets. Here's what I wrote for our catalog:

The on-going legacy of the Japanese American experience has rarely been examined through a Sansei lens. Art by first-generation Issei and second-generation Nisei who were incarcerated in American concentration camps during World War II has been well-documented, as has the heavily assimilated and media-centric landscape of younger API artists.  But the Sansei have remained a shadow or sandwich generation subsumed between survivor guilt and filial piety on the one hand and kodomo no tame ni (sacrifice for our children) on the other.

The Issei identity was defined by immigration, the Nisei by the mass incarceration. The Sansei children of the incarcerated have a foot in two, maybe three worlds, struggling to find balance along the continuum of Japanese>American. The  four of us, now in our 50s and 60s, were born too late to be incarcerated ourselves, but we are old enough to have been influenced by our grandparents’ Issei lifestyles and values, by our Nisei parents’ responses to incarceration and by our own pressures to function in the mainstream rather than in the sheltered backwaters of ethnic enclaves.

We are distinct from the Yonsei, Gosei and Hapa (fourth and fifth generation and mixed heritage) who often express a sense of anger, confusion or loss. The younger generations seek reflections of themselves in the media because they did not grow up seeing themselves reflected in the eyes of a close-knit community. Their childhoods were sanitized of the mud and weeds and sidewalk interactions of traditional lifestyles and cultures.  But many Sansei still remember our grandparents' egg farms, strawberry ranches, and single-room occupancy hotels. Our responses to our heritage are diverse, yet remarkably similar, expressing themselves in family ties, community service, political awareness, and a hyper-sensitivity to equal justice for other marginalized peoples. We are Americanized and yet oblique, liberated yet bound by deeply felt obligation.

Why is our perspective important? Our nation is groping for ways to back out of  the evolutionary dead-end of of a fossil-fuel economy. At a time when traditional cultures around the globe are dying faster than endangered species, we can no longer look back "home" to replenish traditional values; Japan's salarymen and AsiaPop dollies are almost as far removed from the ancient peasant ways as Japanese Americans are.  Perhaps because of the inherited weight of the incarceration, Sansei still embody traces of 19th-century Meiji-era values preserved in amber, as we sift through the gifts and pitfalls of our traditional culture and of our families’ multigenerational American journeys. What do we treasure and what can we lay to rest? How can we add to the multi-faceted and resilience wisdom America needs to meet the challenges of the 21st century?