40 Years of Students with Richard Shaw

On Thursday, April 5^th, we attended 40+ Years of Students (aka Richard Shaw’s retirement party).

Aside from an international reputation as a ceramicist, Richard has also taught ceramics -first at the San Francisco Art Institute -and for the last 20-some-odd years at U.C. Berkeley.



Group photos of Richard's students

The party and exhibit was held at the Worth Ryder Art Gallery at UC Berkeley Kroeber Hall.

The exhibit included work by many of Richard’s former students.



Bust of Shaw



Regrettably, I couldn’t find the artist’s name associated with this bust of Richard.



Portrait by Elise Putnam



This piece was a knockout. A portrait of Richard painted with clay directly onto the gallery wall. The bucket of clay sat on the floor just below.

An old friend of Richard’s, Roy, brought a box of memorabilia from past Shaw exhibits and spread them on the floor.

Virgil, Martha, Alice and Richard

Music was provided by our usual Thursday night crew.

Tony, John, Judy, Tom and Molly (others not seen here include Jeanne, Oletha, Scott, Ned, Jenny, Torin and Patty).

Someone provided Richard “Two Buck Rick” Shaw wine.

Reception was very well attended although I failed to get any crowd shots.

The show runs April 5th through 28^th.

Larry's Vault: More From the Pages of Graphiti

Last post focused on the long-gone graphic artists group, Artists in Print, and the AIP tabloid Graphiti.

Here's a report from the pages of Graphiti titled "Attention: Perspiring Cartoonists" (May 1979) on a AIP sponsored cartoonists seminar.





drawn by David Nesbitt


The featured guests were Sergio Aragones, Phil Frank, Harry Driggs, B.Kliban and William Hamilton.

Larry's Vault: Artists in Print of San Francisco

Artists in Print, the San Francisco Graphics Artists Guild was a non-profit organization of and for graphic artists in the San Francisco bay area. AIP was founded around 1975 and provided workshops, seminars, educational events, exhibits and a much needed communication network between local graphic artists.

The membership roster included designers, photographers, calligraphers, illustrators (medical  illustrators, fashion illustrators), copy writers and cartoonists – in addition to typesetters, paste-up artists, layout artists and probably a whole lot of others occupations that are now extinct

I was a member in the mid 70’s-early‘80’s and thought AIP served its member well as an educational program.

Meeting topics included Elimination of Advertising, A Defense of Advertising, Selling Your Graphic Humor, Fear and Creativity, Illustrating the Children’s Book and Artwork by Computer (in the late 1970’s not too many people knew what that meant). Featured artists and speakers (at events and in the pages of Graphiti ) included  Ardeshir Mohasses, Primo Angelli, Dugald Stermer, Jerry Mander, Leslie Cabarga and Milton Glaser.

Art by Tim Boxell

Art by Phil Frank



Art by Lourdes Agnes Duterte



Art by Erkki Alanen

AIP is long gone. I left San Francisco in the mid-80’s and lost track of the guild. I have no idea what happened to it.  

Graphiti, the AIP tabloid, was published bi-monthly and highlighted a lot of nice work.

(Click on images to enlarge)

Here are few examples of AIP members work from Graphiti (and the AIP Directory).

Art by Bruce McGillivray



Promo by my old pal, Alan Cumings



Erkki Alanen, a very talented artist originally from Finland

Steve Leialoha's great piece for a portfolio night



Art by Leialoha



Here's a couple of things I did for Graphiti :

One issue of Graphiti was dedicated to hand lettering. Here are profiles on Leslie Cabarga, Becky Wilson and Tom Orzechowski :
,

Fine calligraphy by Jenny Hunter Groat



Art by John Patrick Sullivan



All artwork copyright by respective artists

The Close of the Nakagawa Exhibit

The exhibit of the Internment Camp Art of Kasumi “Gus” Nakagawa at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center ends this Wednesday.

The show has been well received with visitors dropping in from San Jose to Santa Rosa as well as from all around Marin County. (As is often the case with our monthly exhibits,  I’m sorry to see  this one go; this one perhaps more than most).

After leaving the internment camp at Poston, Arizona, at the close of the war, Gus Nakagawa headed east.He continued his art studies there. In 1951, he participated in the 75th anniversary exhibition of painting and sculpture by 75 artists from the Art Students League at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He spent much of his life in commerical art.

George Washington Bridge

Here are a few watercolors—post internment camp-- he did in the late 1940’s while living in New York.



Snowball Play, New York City circa 1946



Chinatown, New York City circa 1946



Executive Order 9066: The Internment Camp Art of Kasumi “Gus” Nakagawa

"Latrine and Laundry"

This month, at the galleries of the San Geronimo Valley Community Center, I’m pleased to be presenting an exhibit I think is of some historic significance: The internment camp watercolors of Kasumi “Gus” Nakagawa.



Gus Nakagawa



February 19, 2012 marks the 70th anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt's signing of Executive Order 9066, authorizing the exclusion of persons of Japanese ancestry from designated areas of Washington, Oregon, California and Arizona, in order to prevent any possible acts of espionage or sabotage.  More than 110,000 Japanese Americans were ordered to dispose of their homes and possessions within a matter of days, and report for relocation, bringing with them only what they could carry. 

Evacuation Order

Due process of law was suspended as they were rounded up without being charged of any crime and banished to prison camps in isolated regions of the country for the duration of World War II.   

In the early 1940’s, Gus Nakagawa along with his parents and siblings were sent to the War Department Internment Center in Poston, Arizona, near the California border. 

While there, the still teenaged Gus produced a series of watercolor paintings during his family’s three years of internment.



This photo presumably taken by camp officals while artists were painting a mural.



At Poston, Gus studied watercolor painting under Gene Sogioka (a former Disney animator). Fellow students included Harry Yoshizumi whose work is held in the Japanese-American Archival Collection, Cal State Sacramento





"Barracks" by Nakagawa

"Garage" by Nakagawa



"Outdoors" by Nakagawa



 "Afternoon Dust Storm"  Watercolor by K.Takamura

(The  remarkable piece above is probably the work of Kango Takamura. It was among the works held by the Nakagawa family. Takamura had been a photo retoucher for RKO Studios before his internment at the Manzanar camp).

Cameras (and other recording devices) were not allowed at Poston and in most cases were confiscated.This means that the artwork by Nakagawa and other interned artists is the only personal visual record in existence.

After the war, Nakagawa studied at the Arts Student League in New York and worked as a commercial artist on the East Coast. His work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is in the Huntington Library Collection. Gus is now deceased.  The artworks in this exhibit are now held by his brother Henry Nakagawa, age 91.



David and Henry Nakagawa



The Nakagawa family has loaned the works to the Center for the February exhibit.

A few shots from the art reception.



Harry Cohen and Al Ardelle



Leah Stander, Scott Oakes and Molly

Thanks to David Nakagawa for all his tremendous work on this exhibit.
Artwork and memorabilia courtesy of the Nakagawa family

Here are a few sources on the subject:

Beyond Words: Images from America's Concentration Camps by Deborah Gesensway and Mindy Roseman

"Internment and Identity in Japanese American Art " by Kristine C. Kuramitsu, American Quarterly #4, Dec. 1995

Treasures from Ten Centuries  The Huntington Libary, 2004
(features Gus Nakagawa's artwork)