white christmas in camp

"Born and raised in Los Angeles, I was a city boy who never saw snow in the winter, but you always heard about Christmas’ based on books. New England was where it snowed and all that good stuff. Well anyway, my first year in camp it starts to snow during Christmas. The block fathers built a simulated chimney in the mess hall with a stage and Santa Claus came from the outside through the mess hall window through the chimney into the mess hall where we are celebrating Christmas just like we used to read about. You know, snow and a real Santa Claus and that was the first year Irving Berlin’s white Christmas came out. And man, to me that was my first experience of a real Christmas. Even though we were locked up that didn’t have any bearing on how happy I felt. The only gift we received was some stuff that was sent by a Christian church outside. I got a bar of Palmolive soap. It was hard to get so this was a great present. Most of us got nothing else."

- Robert Uragami, who at the age of fifteen was incarcerated in a concentration camp in Amache, Colorado. He was a student at Amache High School in 1942, the first winter he spent in camp.

Introduction to Linoleum workshop in Berkeley!

Introduction to Linoleum

Instructor/hostess: Patricia Wakida

Date: Saturday and Sunday, February 5-6, 2011

Time: 10-3 p.m. both days with a lunch break

Place: Heyday Books, located at 1633 University Ave.Berkeley, CA 94703. It is walkable from North Berkeley BART!

Just in time for Valentine’s Day….this two-day introduction to linoleum block printing will teach the basic steps for linoleum block design, use of the carving tools, and hand-inking and printing. One of the unique aspects of this particular course is that we will use very little to no electric assistance- this is all hand work!

Day 1: transferring image or drawing onto the block, using carving tools without gouging, pulling proofs.

Day 2: completing the block and experimenting with printing methods.

Materials to bring:
1. An idea of the image 4" x 6". Do sketches at the 4 x 6 size so we can transfer them to the blocks (allow a border). If possible, bring a right reading, old-fashioned Xerox (not a laser print!) copy of your image to class to transfer onto the block. Remember that block printing reverses your image so that it prints right reading. This is especially important (and challenging) for carving text!

2. If you have woodcut or linocut tools of your own please bring them.

3. Papers (anything larger than 4" x 6") from your own collection if you'd like to experiment with those, although I will bring a supply of papers to print on.

4. Pencils and erasers, sharpie pens (fine and fat), xacto knife. These are all optional.

Workshop fee: $30 per person plus the $7 materials fee. Materials fee: $7 (includes one 4 x 6 linoleum block, ink, and paper). I'll lend folks my linocarving tools, inking brayers and various tools for hand-printing. Additional blocks can be purchased from me the day of the workshop at $3 apiece.

Your hostess: I'm a hard-core bibliophile and book artist with a background in trade publishing. My relations to books are kept tangible and toothsome by running wasabi press, making illustrated letterpress books, broadsides, posters and cards on a Chandler and Price press stashed away in a tiny garage studio in Los Angeles. My book arts education began with an apprenticeship in Japanese papermaking in Mino, Gifu- prefecture, Japan in 1996, followed by an apprenticeship at the Arts and Crafts Press under linoleum block artist and letterpress printer, Yoshiko Yamamoto, in Berkeley, California. I've also worked as a teaching assistant in the book arts program at Mills College, the San Francisco Center for the Book, and ASUC Art Studio. Just last year I tore myself away from my beloved Oakland (home for 23 years!) to take the position of Curator of History at the Japanese American National Museum.
Me web site: www.wasabipress.com

To reserve a space:
Send a check or Paypal fee to Patricia Wakida
wasabipress@yahoo.com

Murao is Missing

Despite the fact that nisei Shig Murao was arrested at City Lights for selling HOWL to an undercover cop, taken to the SF police department for fingerprints and a mug shot, and actually stood trial with Ferlinghetti in court, the makers of the new film HOWL deemed him an unnecessary character. Erased.

Story here by JK Yamamoto, originally published in Nikkei West newspaper.

I finally went to see the movie with Sam for a late showing in Pasadena, and though the first few minutes brought indignant tears of rage to my eyes, I began to feel it dissolve away when the realization of how feeble the film was actually hit me. Without a doubt, it is a slap in the face to witness the deliberate act of writing people of color out of the mainstream history and culture. Because the main character of the film was the poem "Howl" and not really Ginsberg himself, many important people in Ginsberg's life were excised out, or relegated to the role of cardboard mugs of handsome men and women in their clunky 50s eyewear and cardigans. However, I do still bear a grudge that because the film focused on the controversy of the poem, its publication and the trial that ensued (while cutting back and forth to shots of Ginsberg's inaugural reading at Six Gallery back on October 7, 1955 and fiery Molochy naked city animation by Eric Drooker) I still argue that Shig deserved to be included in this tale.

Perhaps its an easy thing for me to dismiss the film HOWL as a major disappointment, given that the court scenes had zero tension (all of the witnesses who saw now artistic or literary value to the poem were depicted as self-satisfied, uptight morons stuck in their ye olde Chaucer ways); and the script lacked any context in which the poem was written and conceived in, other than Ginsberg's personal search for identity. (No mention of the World War II and how it birthed the corporate military machine and a generation of complacent squares all marching towards their prefab suburban life of consumerism). In other words, what was it that this book of poems was pushing against?

Yet I can't help but wonder, at what point in the screenplay that it was agreed that Murao was a disposable character? How was the inclusion of Shig as a co-defendant (as was historically accurate) hindering the script? What gains were made by steamlining a piece of the story that might have brought a much needed twist of irony and complexity to the film?


Every artist has the right to create a work as they see fit. Yeah yeah, go on ahead and write your own damned book.

autumn inventory headrush shout

Went on a printmaking frenzy in September, and as a result, there's a lot more to look at on my Etsy store.

Joanna Chiyo Nakamura Droeger- Nisei inventor of the "mud pie" dessert

Karen Tei Yamashita is always full of the most interesting Nisei history, and when she told me that a Nisei woman ran a famous cafe in North Beach in the 60s and invented the mud pid dessert, I just had to find out who it was. Unfortunately, I discovered who this charming woman was too late, as she passed away in November, 2004. However, I believe her husband is still living and might be worth tracking down for Shig related memories.

But what a thrill, to find this utterly unique Nisei in the thick of the North Beach bohemian scene. The story just gets lusher and more fantastic by the day.

From the San Francisco Chronicle obituary:

Joanna Chiyo Nakamura Droeger, who is said to have invented Mud Pie at her once-famous San Francisco restaurant that was popular with writers and other notables, died Thursday at age 76.

She died at home in Cupertino from natural causes following prolonged health problems, said her son, Michael Droeger of San Francisco.

Part of San Francisco's bohemian artists community, Ms. Droeger and her husband, John Droeger, were married in 1957 and the same year opened the Brighton Express restaurant adjacent to the Old Spaghetti Factory.

The restaurant soon relocated on Pacific Street and became a hangout for writers and performers, both famous and soon-to-be-famous. Among the regulars were authors Christopher Isherwood and Herbert Gold and budding impresario Bill Graham "at a time when all he owned was a motorcycle," said John Droeger, now of Patagonia, Ariz.

Semiregulars and guests included William Saroyan, Janis Joplin, Lenny Bruce, the Smothers Brothers, Imogene Cunningham, Gus Hall and Woody Allen in company with Herb Caen.

Joanna Droeger was "jolly, laughing, funny, accepting," recalled Gold. "Where she walked, she dragged good vibes along with her."

A Chronicle "Night Life" column by Grover Sales paid tribute in 1962:

"Among North Beach restaurateurs, Joanna is regarded as a gifted and highly creative cook; in ready agreement are the inhabitants of the Brighton Express, an eatery in the old International Settlement on Pacific near Kearny that is truly beyond category.

"Owned and most feverishly operated by egg-shaped Joanna and her 6-foot-6 husband John Droeger, the Brighton Express serves as dining room, orphanage and social clinic for a strictly non-tourist clientele of entertainers, artists, writers and unclassifiables who subsist on Joanna's Daily Special, topped off with one of her unbelievable hand-crafted desserts -- usually a rhapsodic coffee ice cream and fudge delicacy misleadingly titled 'Mud Pie.' "

Her son Michael traced the origin of the dessert in a biographical sketch:

"Perhaps my mother's biggest claim to fame is as the inventor of the dessert Mud Pie in 1957," he wrote. "Her original concoction of an Oreo cookie crust, coffee ice cream and homemade fudge topping has been often imitated."

She got the idea from "an article my mother read about the then-newly married Barbra Streisand and Elliot Gould," he said. "They apparently kept a freezer under their bed so they could eat coffee ice cream without leaving the bedroom. My mother thought that that was such a decadent and wonderful thing that she went about looking to create a coffee ice cream dessert.

"The name came quite innocently enough when someone saw her making the pies (pressing the ice cream into the crust by hand) and asked what she was doing. 'Oh, just making mud pies,' she replied. The name stuck."

Born in Los Angeles as a sansei, or third-generation Japanese American, Ms. Droeger spent her early years with her older sister living in a convent. She was interned with other Japanese Americans during World War II at four detention camps: Tanforan, Tule Lake, Topaz and Amache. She began her final year of high school in a camp and graduated from Lowell High School in San Francisco.

In addition to her husband and son, she is survived by a daughter, Gillian Droeger of San Francisco; and two sisters, Natalie Katayanagi of Richmond and Diane Sasaki of Detroit.

She refused to have a formal funeral, her son said, so a "festive service honoring her memory" will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. Sundayat the Kimochi Center, 1840 Sutter St., San Francisco.

The family requests that donations in her memory be given to Project Open Hand, 730 Polk St., San Francisco, CA 94109.

San Francisco Loteria "Cockcycle"

Recently, the San Francisco Center for the Book asked me to be one of 15 artists to illustrate and carve a 12" x 12" linoleum block on the theme of the Mexican game loteria. This is actually a riff off of a (surprise) Los Angeles project headed up by Aardvark Press. In this impressive and ambitious printing project, a group of truly gifted Los Angeles artists were asked to create loteria "cards", each corresponding to a number and theme in the loteria game, and that also reflected LA in some way.

The San Francisco version was designed pretty much the same way- 15 artists, choosing a number and a theme based on loteria, with imagery that somehow references San Francisco. Not being a San Franciscan (I'm an Oaklander, ahem) I had to get into a yoga position and really dig deep for this one. However, once I had a theme in my grasp (I chose #1, El Gallo, the rooster) it all came together. San Francisco. Hot chicks with tattoos on bikes, riding in the fog. Get it?

the little hook at the border of Oregon and Washington

Scenes from the month-long residency at the Espy Literary Foundation in Oysterville. I finished an entire rough draft of the book- ten chapters, nearly 37,000 words. Yow.

Reading at the Historic Oysterville Schoolhouse

Considering the Oyster

Since June 1st, I have had the terrific honor of being an artist-in-residency at the esteemed Espy Literary Foundation, located in pictureque Oysterville, Washington. I applied for this award some two odd years ago, was told a year later that they Foundation was suffering financial difficulties and promptly forgot all about it.

Now that my life has been radically changed with the new job, new city, new engagement, I hadn't really been putting the necessary "umph" back into the Shigeyoshi Murao book that it really deserved, and deep in my dark dark soul- I knew it. So when the Espy Foundation President, Polly Freidlander, called in early May while I was at work...I could scarcely make out her words and comprehend that I was being offered a month away to write. I managed to eke out that novelist Shawn Wong was on the literary committee this year and had in fact, selected my application amongst a host of many others as something worth investing in. Cripes!

So with the incredible grace of my boss(es) at JANM I was able to pack a tiny bag, exactly two books (I chose Louis Fiset's newly released book on Camp Harmony and James McNaughton's Army published book on Nisei Linguists) and some wet weather gear and headed to the peninsula.

One week into the residency, I can say that chapter one is in fairly solid shape, and chapter two (pre-war Seattle leading up from the immigration of Murao's parents from Chinran, Japan to Seattle all the way up to the outbreak of war in 1941) is finally emerging. There are eleven chapters outlined all together, some more distant clouds on the horizon than others. But I'm pretty thrilled that I can actually SEE the book now- its bold strokes and feathering highlights and textures.

In between marathon reading/writing sessions, if there is ever a break in the rain of course, I am on my bicycle exploring the cranberry bogs, the rhododendron forests wet with young ferns and the husks of emptied oysters. Along the path I've already met a black bear ambling straight down the road, a two day old fawn nursing on her mother, and an entire flotilla of beavers leaving filagreed silvery currents in their wake.

Until I can get my claws on a usb cord to download photos, I'm borrowing these excellent shots by local photographer, John Granen.

For a charming little description of historic Oysterville and illustrations of the gingerbread houses painted wedgewood blue and firetruck red that line the main street feast here. The houses on this particular street each have a historic, handpainted sign telling you who the original owner was and when the house was built. Cuuuute! Clambakes and crossword puzzles in my pedal pushers.

ABOUT THE ESPY FOUNDATION:
Created in 1998, the Espy Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Oysterville, Washington and dedicated to advancing and encouraging the literary and visual arts. The Foundation was named for Oysterville native Willard R. Espy, a wordsmith and memoirist, whose prolific career celebrated language, word play, light verse, and what Henry James once called the “visible past”: the events in the history of a time and place that can be recovered and preserved by the reach of a long memory and a gifted imagination. Serving the needs of emerging as well as established writers and artists, the Foundation’s main focus is our residency program.


Since the Program’s inaugural year in 1999, residencies have become the centerpiece of the Foundation’s service to writers and artists. The Foundation’s goal is to provide an environment in which residents can pursue their work without interruption. Writers and artists live and work in the serenely beautiful village of Oysterville–a national historic district–located near the northern tip of the Long Beach Peninsula, on the southwest coast of Washington State.

Return of the Asian American Modernist Geniuses

Not one, but TWO fantastic exhibitions are opening this June/July in the San Francisco Bay Area, and unlucky me, I'm living in Los Angeles. At least I still lived in Oakland and was able to catch multiple programs at the Asian/American/Modern exhibition at the DeYoung Museum, which tragically, was unable to tour.

Dewitt Chang is an art critic, someone whose writing I'm most familiar with from his regular reviews in the East Bay Express, one of my most beloved local rags. He is curating what sounds like a vibrant and exciting exhibition of paintings called GOLD STANDARD: Nine Asian American Modernist Artists from the 1970s, at the Togonon Gallery in San Francisco, opening on June 10th.

A few weeks later, an exhibition curated by the celebrated artist Carlos Villa entitled REHISTORICIZING THE TIME AROUND ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM IN THE BAY AREA is will open at the Luggage Gallery on Market Street. The goal of REHISTORICIZING is to complete the digital and written gathering of exclusively “first voice” biographical material of 23 Women Artists and Artists of Color active in the San Francisco Bay Area from the 1950’s to the late 1960’s, when their histories were undervalued because of public and personal hegemonic social and aesthetic scrutiny. The archive will be housed at the Anne Bremer Memorial Library, San Francisco Art Institute.

Mr. Villa did the world an amazing service by not only curating the work and getting it up in a terrifically accessible space, he also conducted a series of priceless interviews with many of the artists in the exhibit, contextualizing them with his own experience as an artist of color in the 1950s-1960s and the spirit of authenticity and the world of bohemia that existed at that time.

My personal connection to this subject is the galaxy of curators, writers, cultural fanatics and artists themselves who have gently guided me through memory and history to the lives and accomplishments of these artists of color who persevered to create astonishing bodies of work. This includes working with Karin Higa, Kristine Kim, and Emily Anderson of the Japanese American National Museum (where I now work as a curator of history) on biographies of nisei artists Hisako Hibi, Hideo Date, and Henry Sugimoto. I've collaborated with Kimi Kodani Hill on her book chronicling her grandfather, Chiura Obata, and with historian Mark Dean Johnson on a catalog of Labor Art of California and most recently, a book on Prison/Culture as seen through contemporary artists and poets both in and outside the prison system.

I urge everyone who ever gave a damn about living truthfully to visit both galleries and telling me all about it here.

how do I know thee?

We're in our 9th week of living in Los Angeles, and it seems like an appropriate time to review what our user's poll on the likes/dislikes. Shall we?

LIKE:

Being greeted by mariachi his and hers every single morning


Pastrami sandwiches from Langer's, Daikokuya ramen, that evil stickyrice banana Thai dessert from Bhan Kanom Thai Corp., the night farmer's market in So. Pasadena, carnitas plate from Northgate Market in Norwalk, daily surprise in the JANM volunteer break room (aka grandma's latest baked goods)


Little Tokyo public library


Chinatown dragon gate actually breathes out puffs of mist


Metro Gold Line


Grandma's magical avocado tree


Hammer Museum bookstore


We're literally surrounded by every freeway in the city, but its peaceful here in Boyle Heights. At least from this vantage point, when I have to jump on a freeway that part is self-explanatory.




Variety of tropical, delicious flowering trees not yet identified.


Romper kitties



DISLIKE:

Driving. LA freeways. Being 20 minutes late to Mary Gaitskill's reading at the Hammer even though we left an hour early from Little Tokyo.

Hollywood, and the stranglehold it has on the city. The fawning over television and film shoots people go through is enough to make me want to blow my brains out.

Primo target for megaton strikes (OK that one my fiance came up with, but I'll concede to it)

Distance, even on bike or train or foot. One simply cannot get from point A to point B without a lot of time to spare. Its a real drag.

Lack of a really vibrant letterpress community.

As of yet, no equivalent to Oaklandish, Laughing Squid, or other community unifiers that help me navigate this big city.

No bike paths!

dark lights, splendid histories

In the passing silence of January and February, I can at least report that I've been busy behind the green scrim, and if you were to jerk back the curtain and see what's happening backstage- I'd say you'd be pretty amazed yourself.

First of all, the impossible has actually been realized as possible: I have left my beloved city of Oakland and moved nearly 300 lbs of books and an additional 1000 lbs of lead type, linoleum block archives and my c&p pilot press to the balmy climes of Los Angeles. Yes, my dear readers- I closed my eyes and walked right off the deep end into the abyss, all for the temptation that comes with a thrilling new job. So many possibilities, I mused...as I packed the eight bookshelves and a snake.

On February 2nd, I became the new curator of history at the Japanese American National Museum, located in Lil' Tokyo, First and Alameda. All is well here, despite a sense of befuddlement and lack of routine- one loses oneself with disturbing ease in Los Angeles clamor. Luckily, I found a place just off of a train line close to Little Tokyo (a neighborhood known as Boyle Heights, once a melting pot of Jews, Japanese, Mexicans and Blacks. Now 98% Mexican, but hey! we have the best selection of paleteria and taco trucks). There's a lot of wandering discovery, sans car, thanks to this Gold Line train. It goes all the way to Pasadena, and stops through Chinatown, Union Station, Little Tokyo, through the eastern neighborhoods of LA.

The Japanese American National Museum, not to my surprise, is all so familiar. And familial. There is an army of grandparents (something in the order of 250 volunteer docents who work here at least once a week. Many have been doing this forever (20 years and counting?) surrounding us with coffeecakes and questions about our health and children and which camp our parents were in. Sort of dizzying, but mostly pleasant and dare I say, a comfort? These docents also inform a good deal of the programming and exhibitions since they constitute a fair chunk of our audience, though they are rapidly aging and every week brings a report of someone else in recovery or at home for an ailment. Busloads of children also come daily, for their first exposure to the JA story and camps....

My main duty as Curator of History in the coming months and years will be exhibitions; in particular I am in charge of re-envisioning our core exhibition on the history of Japanese Americans and rebuilding it, from our collections of 80,000 + artifacts and documents. For those of you who haven't visited the Japanese American National Museum, I assure you that there is nothing quite like it in the country. I encourage each of you to come and experience both the temporary and permanent exhibits, which are both profound with pathos and beautiful for their design and content. The museum is right in the middle of Lil' Tokyo, full of yumyums and awesome old Japanese hardware stores full of saws and tomato seedlings. There is a Kinokuniya bookstore and a restaurant dedicated to japanese curries.

So in coming weeks I hope to get the press and studio back into working order, esp since I have another special announcement I'd like to illustrate and print. More soon, my darklings, more soon.

brown bagger

I forgot to post these brown bag prints, used to hold homemade candies that Sam concocted. Almond brittle, peanut brittle, almond roca, & dark chocolate/dried apricot/nut bark.

Slightly Behind and to the Left

My first big project of 2010 was to do fifty customized book jackets for my dear friend, writer extraordinare Claire Light. Her first collection of stories, "Slightly Behind and to the Left" has just been released by Aqueduct Press, a daring small press dedicated to publishing challenging, feminist science fiction. Although Claire was thrilled with the creation of the book, she wanted a little more autonomy and something "special" to celebrate the covers, and thus, came up with the idea of making limited edition book jackets to wrapped around the book.

The concept for the cover image was to depict a seventeen year old Japanese American farmer boy in the strawberry fields of his home, circa 1940. The trick was to evoke alien abduction, the title of the main story in the book.

Here is the initial sketches for the cover image:

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Which then led to the inking stage:



Once Claire signed off on the finished drawing, I did a little bit of Photoshop cleaning using my new Wacom drawing tablet (digital! gasp!), laid out the cover design text, and had polymerplates made by my goodly friends at Logos Design. From there, I had to rely upon the gracious generosity of my friend Maia de Raat of DandyLion Press to utilize her Vandercook Press at the last minute, since the job didn't fit well onto my C&P pilot.

And then we were on! It took about five hours total to crank out the whole run. But I think they are great....printed on recycled brown paper bags for that extra tactile, vintage agrarian look.

Claire is celebrating with a gonzo birthday party/book release event:

SLIGHTLY BEHIND AND TO THE LEFT book launch party!
Date: Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Time: 7:00pm – 10:00pm
Location: Socha Cafe
Street: 3235 Mission Street

Our collaborative letterpress project was also recently featured on Logos' blog! Check it out right here.