LAUREN IIDA
  • Home
  • Bio
  • Series
    • Memory Net
    • Anticipation/Paris
    • Citizen's Indefinite Leave
    • 32 Aspects of Daily Life
    • 100 Aspects of the Moon
  • Projects
    • Meta Paper Cut Mural
    • Contemporary Cambodian Art
    • Burke Museum Residency
    • Denver Night Lights/Ukraine
    • Redmond Sound Transit
    • Seattle Storm Signal Box
    • Nuclear Sculpture
    • Densho Memory Net of Remembrance
    • Plymouth Housing Mural, Seattle
    • Federal Way Sound Transit Mural
    • Denver Billboard
    • 2nd Ave Sign Project
    • Factory Phnom Penh
    • Densho Artist-in-Residence
    • Oneness for Cornish
    • Tsuru for Solidarity
    • City of Bellevue Portable Art Collection
    • Washington State Arts Commission
    • Siem Reap, Cambodia Public Installation
    • "Public Art Comes to Your Front Yard"
    • "Shoreline Banners" Public Art
  • Events
  • Contact
  • Press

Blog

Shimomura's art of war, internment, undying stereotypes

1/16/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture“Roger Tracy” by Roger Shimomura is featured in “Roger Shimomura: An American Knockoff” on exhibit at Hallie Ford Museum of Art Jan. 17 through March 29. Shimomura’s art was influenced by the pop culture and comic books of his youth.(Photo: Courtesy of Museum of Art, Washington State University)



 Tom Mayhall Rastrelli, Statesman Journal
5:19 p.m. PST January 15, 2015

Artist Roger Shimomura's earliest memory is of his third birthday in 1942. Born in Seattle, he was with his family in the assembly center at the state fairgrounds in Puyallup, Wash. But they weren't there for cotton candy. They were prisoners living in horse stalls waiting to be corralled onto trains and banished to the Japanese internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho.

"They were in such a rush to get us behind barbed wire that the camps weren't ready yet," Shimomura said. "They just built floors right over the dirt saturated with cow and horse manure. That stench was permeating."



Picture“Chinese Imposter #5” by Roger Shimomura confront the stereotype that all Asians are the same. In the painting, Shimomura’s garb matches that of the Chinese men surrounding him, but he is showing a Japanese tattoo. “Roger Shimomura: An American Knockoff” is on exhibit at Hallie Ford Museum of Art Jan. 17 through March 29.(Photo: Courtesy of the Greg Kucera Gallery)
For three years, Shimomura, his family and more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned. Shimomura said the mistake that America made of not being able to distinguish between Japanese enemies and Japanese Americans during World War II forever shaped his life, work and parents.

"They paid for it dearly. Two or three years out of their life erased," Shimomura said. "I think it screwed up my parents' generation in a major way. I think they lived with an inferiority complex the rest of their lives. They were so afraid of being themselves because they were punished for that. I never had Japanese things around me when I was growing up because my parents were afraid."

One thing Shimomura did have around him in his youth were comic books. Dick Tracy, Popeye and Superman filled his childhood imagination.

"I never read comic books," Shimomura said. "I collected the ones I wanted to look at.


Picture“Classmates #1” by Roger Shimomura is featured in “Roger Shimomura: An American Knockoff” on exhibit at Hallie Ford Museum of Art Jan. 17 through March 29.(Photo: Courtesy of the Museum of Art at Washington State University)
"As a painter, print maker, and performance artist, Shimomura's range of work addresses the sociopolitical issues that have shaped his life experiences as a third generation American of Japanese descent," said John Olbrantz, Hallie Ford's director. "His remarkable body of work acts as a powerful and compelling self-portrait and window into the Asian American experience."



Shimomura named his last series "An American Knockoff" after his experience of never quite being accepted as an American.

"Something that Asian people suffer in this country, the presumption that they're foreigners," Shimomura said. "That's sort of the definition of a knockoff."


Read the full article

0 Comments

'A Cut Above' art exhibit to put blade work on display at the Sammamish Commons

1/3/2015

0 Comments

 
PictureKong with Rooster 2014 Hand cut paper by Lauren Iida
  • by DANIEL NASH,  Issaquah Reporter Staff Writer 
  • Jan 2, 2015 at 11:11AM

The Sammamish Arts Commission and 4 Culture will allow the public to meet four blade-wielding artists at a reception Monday.

"A Cut Above" opened at City Hall in the Sammamish Commons Plaza in October and will close on Jan. 16. The art exhibit features cut work inspired by Asian traditions in the media of paper, wood, prints and sculpture. It was developed by curator June Sekiguchi of Era Living, a retirement community with locations in Seattle and the Eastside.

Artists Betsy Best-Sparado, Mia Yoshihara Bradshaw, Lauren Iida and Naoko Morisawa will be present from 6-8 p.m. Jan. 5. The exhibit's original curator, June Sekiguchi, will join them.

City Hall is located at 801 228th Ave. S.E.

For more information, contact Allison Gubata with the city of Sammamish at 425-295-0597.

Issaquah Reporter

0 Comments

    Author

    Lauren Iida 

    Archives

    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    September 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

All Images Copyright Lauren Iida © 2022
  • Home
  • Bio
  • Series
    • Memory Net
    • Anticipation/Paris
    • Citizen's Indefinite Leave
    • 32 Aspects of Daily Life
    • 100 Aspects of the Moon
  • Projects
    • Meta Paper Cut Mural
    • Contemporary Cambodian Art
    • Burke Museum Residency
    • Denver Night Lights/Ukraine
    • Redmond Sound Transit
    • Seattle Storm Signal Box
    • Nuclear Sculpture
    • Densho Memory Net of Remembrance
    • Plymouth Housing Mural, Seattle
    • Federal Way Sound Transit Mural
    • Denver Billboard
    • 2nd Ave Sign Project
    • Factory Phnom Penh
    • Densho Artist-in-Residence
    • Oneness for Cornish
    • Tsuru for Solidarity
    • City of Bellevue Portable Art Collection
    • Washington State Arts Commission
    • Siem Reap, Cambodia Public Installation
    • "Public Art Comes to Your Front Yard"
    • "Shoreline Banners" Public Art
  • Events
  • Contact
  • Press