Solo show: Ephemeral Allure at UC Santa Barbara Women's Center

Ephemeral Allure; Eternal Struggle

UCSB Women's Center, Nov. 2, 2011 - Feb. 3, 2012

Forty years ago, when Ms. magazine was founded and the Equal Rights Amendment sought ratification, women knew they were oppressed. The external barriers were well-defined: they were expected to be wives and mothers, discouraged from going to college, denied advancement in the workplace and reproductive control over their own bodies. The list goes on and on.  

Gains have been made, but true equality remains elusive. Today's barriers are much less obvious, and consumerist distractions are insidiously seductive.

These 39 artworks contrast my paintings from the early 1980s with recent photographs to ask "How much progress has been made? Can women really have it all? Or do we need to choose carefully what we buy into? The fight for true freedom begins within." 

Ephmeral Allure opening

When I was their age, sensible shoes and natural fibers were not a fashion statement; they were a  move towards healthy and affordable lifestyles. Today's young women may be liberated from corsets and pantyhose but are tooth whiteners and nail spas an improvement?

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?

Diaspora: Tradition, Locality and Identity

1) We Hold These Truths….

14.5"W x 10" H x 2.5"D. 2010.

Wood, cloth, paper, barbed wire, cigarbox, polymer clay, acrylic medium, copper dust.

Traditional materials: family photo, Japanese writing, origami paper, rice paper.

Contemporary issue: immigrants’ rights, civil liberties, community collaboration, Japanese/ American/Californian identity, national security, racial profiling.

My Issei grandparents immigrated from Japan in the 1910s. Like all Asian immigrants of the time, they were denied citizenship and property rights. Nevertheless, by the 1920s, they managed to lease a 140-acre farm north of Pismo Beach. Every year, the local Japanese American community demonstrated loyalty to their adopted country by participating in the local Independence Day parade. In this late 1920s photo, my mother and uncle stand in front of a flag- and flower-decked float (bearing kimono-clad dancers, out of frame).

Less than ten years later, anti-Japanese growers seized on World War II as an excuse to force Japanese Americans off the West Coast. 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in American concentration camps. My family was exiled to the Arizona desert and did not resettle in Pismo Beach because of lingering postwar prejudice. The scars of their pea fields are still visible on the hills north of Pismo Beach.

I tell these stories to teach new immigrants that the forces of prejudice and exploitation have long roots, and we all have rights and responsibilities to to use the democratic process for positive change.

2) What They Could Carry….

Installation. 36"W x 82"H x 15"D. Mixed media: Buddhist shrine, evacuation basket, barbed wire, family photographs. 2010.

Traditional materials: Buddhist shrine, barbed wire, family photographs.

Contemporary issue: civil liberties, Japanese American identity, national security, racial profiling, historical presence of Asians in California.

Prior to WWII, two-thirds of Japanese Americans were Buddhist, but many hid their Buddhist ties after Pearl Harbor, and never fully reclaimed them. In the panicky days after the outbreak of WWII, frightened families hid or destroyed precious items connected with Japan, including shrines, photos, letters, and phonograph records. 

My grandparents lost almost everything in the "Evacuation" from the West Coast—the lease on their farm, the property they owned in town, even their house, which was burned to the ground. But they were devout Buddhists whose faith deepened in hard times. They were forced to destroy their shrine, but kept the Nembutsu prayer firmly in their hearts, along with memories of their lost land and community. Those values sustained them in the searing Arizona desert; in post-war migrant labor camps, and for the rest of their lives. Unlike many incarcerated families, my relatives talked openly about hard times, including the injustice of the concentration camps. They taught their children and grandchildren the importance of shinjin, deep faith, in using life’s challenges as growth opportunities.

If tradition is defined as meaningful cultural objects handed down from generation, barbed wire and luggage tags have, sadly, become traditional symbols for Japanese Americans. Many of us are four or five generations removed from Japan, and yet we still sometimes are told to “go back to where we came from.” We have been here for more than a century, yet period photographs are not part of the mainstream conception of Asians in America. My grandfather with horse-and-plow, my uncle playing baseball, my mother in kimono, dancing at Obon. Prior to the incarceration, we were proud to be American and proud to be Japanese. We did seem it as a choice between either-or, but both-and—two faces of a single whole.

Larger installation with the “American Dream” series and “We the People” series. (Concept sketch: actual installation would include 3 D installation “What They Carried” with three 12x12" canvas panels hung on aeither side. For larger images and commentary on the six panels, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/8517595@N05/sets/72157624099775623/

3) Know Your Place, mixed media installation, 32"w x 46"h x 22"d, acrylic on canvas with traditional silk malong, rice, sampaguita flower petals, spices, and found objects. 2010.

I am not Filipina American, but I grew up grew up in communities where Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Latinos, blacks, and marginalized white migrants were layered on the same terrain. Although particulars of culture, language and custom varied, many of the same issues resonated for successive groups consigned to the margins—inner cities, single room occupancy hotels, and the seasonal migration trails of agricultural workers. 

I grew up looking and listening to stories of commonality and difference. Filipinos face particular challenges around the impact of colonialism, Catholicism, and stereotyping as happy, laid-back service workers. They are rarely recognized for their intelligence and organizational and communication skills. 

Every young adult undergoes a journey to discover their place in the world. For immigrants or the children of immigrants, the odyssey can be complicated by forced assimilation and cultural dislocation. “Know Your Place” explores the struggle of a young Filipina to find balance amid conflicting messages and stereotypes about sexual orientation, gender, religion, culture, tradition and work. The work raises questions for the viewer of what it means to know and respect one’s true place in the world.

3B) Know Your Place as a larger installation with “The Gross Domestic Product” series and “The Nanny Question” series about Filipina overseas workers. 2008. However, this might push the balance too far away from traditional elements. (Actual installation would consist of “Know Your Place” 3D installation in a corner or against a flat wall with a set of 14"W x 11"H photocollages hung on either side.) For larger images and commentary on “The Gross Domestic Product” series and “The Nanny Question,” see http://www.flickr.com/photos/8517595@N05/sets/72157624099775623/

4) A Well-Made Life.

Photocollage. 17"W x 11"H. 2008

Traditional elements: Karuta cards, Japanese scissors, kimono fabrics. 

Contemporary issues: aging, end of life, loss of family farms, the value of sustainable agriculture.

At ninety, Jiichan was still feeding us new dishes learned from Japanese TV

—elaborately fussy concoctions you’d expect from a Tokyo housewife—

not from a callous-palmed old man in mud-caked workboots.

Not long after we found him on the roof—patching a leak with tarpaper—

He decided he was ready for a change.

He had a bad hip, fading sight and “water on his heart.” And he didn’t want to

keep calling Uncle Ray when he felt sick during the night

So he said good-bye to his ten-acre farm,

his cactus garden,

his fruit trees grown from cuttings

traded with long-dead friends.

He would miss fixing water pumps,

tightening door hinges,

and walking the muddy fields

amid the ghosts of

strawberry fields and orchards....

In spite of the twinkling trees and tasteful furniture

the  rest home was as impersonal

as a hotel lobby, and just as transitory.

It was not long before Jiichan checked out—

He moved on to another dimension.

Additional images from UC Santa Barbara show at  Flickr: Double Vision 

from upcoming Distillations show (JFK university) at:

Flickr: Distillations

Double Vision: A Celebration of Hybridity

Double Vision: A Celebration of Hybridity

Digital Photography by Shizue Seigel, UC Santa Barbara Multicultraul Center, April 13-June 13

Artist’s Statement: Japanese American artist and writer Shizue Seigel blurs the boundaries between photography, painting, found objects and poetry to explore the shifting planes of multicultural identity. In today's evolving world, where minorities are the majority, the complexity of our stories is our American

story.

Through little-known narratives from many cultures, she illuminates the common humanity that transcends divisions of race, gender, class or national origin. We are a nation in transition in a world in flux, backing our way out of the evolutionary dead-end of a fossil fuel economy. It’s an exciting time to be alive, and to contribute to the on-going national conversation. But to do so effectively, we must be well-informed and open-minded. Who are the givers and the takers, the informed and the oblivious?  Who is American? What is progress? What gives us strength and how can we move forward together?

Bio:

Shizue Seigel was born in 1946, too late to be incarcerated in American concentration camps like her parents and 120,000 other Japanese Americans. But she earned her first dollar picking strawberries in a migrant labor camp for former incarcerees. As a child, she shuttled from segregated Baltimore to Occupied Japan to skid-row Stockton. Arriving in San Francisco in the late 50s, she flowed with the zeitgeist to the Haight Ashbury in the 60s, Indian ashrams in the 70s, the Financial District in the 80s, the AIDS epidemic in the 90s and today’s vibrant mix of arts and activism.

These experiences engendered an awareness of many cultures, and deep compassion for the disadvantaged.  After some arts training in painting and printmaking in the late 1970s, she became an art director at major advertising agencies with clients like Chevron, Kaiser Permanente and Wells Fargo.

In the early 90s, she developed a reality-based HIV-prevention campaign for African American women for the Centers for Disease Control.  It was a life-changing experience which sparked a passion for furthering social change through narratives about ordinary people.

After several years working with the poor, homeless and addicted, she began working with the Japanese American community as the editor of the Japanese American Historical Society’s Nikkei Heritage magazine, and the author of the book, In Good Conscience: Supporting Japanese Americans During the Internment (AACP, Inc. 2006).

Her paintings, photography and mixed media have been exhibited locally, nationally and internationally by the Women’s Caucus for Art, Asian American Women Artists’ Association, Manilatown Center, Kearny Street Workshop, Greenlining Institute, University of San Francisco, UC Santa Barbara, Women Made Gallery, the United Nations NGO Conference, Mexico City and others. Her poetry and other writing have been published in numerous anthologies and journals, including Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women and InvAsian: Growing Up Asian and Female in the United States.

Many thanks to Julianne Gavino and Viviana Marsano for making the exhibition possible. See all 29 images from the show at my Flickr site: www.flickr.com/  Screen Name: ShizueS. Album: Double Vision.