Friends & Mentors

Friends & Mentors

A Special Exhibition in Celebration of the Fifth Anniversary of the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center

Introduction by Mark Daniel Cohen Reminiscences by Yuko Nii

Friends & Mentors contents Williamsburg Art & Historical Center . . . . . . . . . 1 Pataki Proclaimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Golden Proclamaition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Toshiko Takaezu Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Reminiscences by Yuko Nii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

A Word from the Founder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Ansei Uchima Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

The Anomaly of the Compounded Self: The Material Influence of the Mentor

by Mark David Cohen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Toshiko Uchima Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Jack Lenor Larsen Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Reminiscences by Yuko Nii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Isamu Noguchi Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Reminiscences by Yuko Nii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Jerry Rudquist Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Reminiscences by Yuko Nii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Published in conjunction with

Friends and Mentors A Special Exhibition in Celebration of the Fifth Anniversary of the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center Jack Lenor Larsen, Isamu Noguchi, Jerry Rudquist, Toshiko Takaezu, Ansei Uchima, Toshiko Uchima, Esteban Vicente October 9th through November 11th, 2001 Williamsburg Art & Historical Center Introduction by Mark Daniel Cohen Reminiscences by Yuko Nii

Williamsburg Art & Historical Center (WAH Center) In October 1996, Yuko Nii founded the non-profit, Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, based upon her “Bridge Concept.” That concept envisions a multifaceted, multicultural art center whose mission is to coalesce the diverse artistic community, and create a bridge between local, national and international artists, emerging and established artists, and artists of all disciplines. She also wanted to preserve the WAH Center’s building, a French Second Empire masterpiece, and make it a functional part of the cultural community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

When the Center opened in 1996 the artist population in Williamsburg/Greenpoint was already 3000, but there were just a few galleries and performance spaces. Today, there are more than 10,000 artists living and working in this area and over thirty galleries now in existence, together with many fashionable new shops, bars and restaurants. Williamsburg/Greenpoint has become one of the trendiest neighborhoods in New York City, and is one of the largest artists’ communities in the world.

Ansei Uchima and Toshiko Uchima Reminiscences by Yuko Nii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Esteban Vicente Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Reminiscences by Yuko Nii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Yuko Nii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . back cover

Catalog contents © 2001 Williamsburg Art & Historical Center 135 Broadway, Brooklyn, New York 11211 (718) 486-7372 or 486-6012 www.wahcenter.org e-mail: wahcenter@earthlink.net Catalog contents © 2001 Williamsburg Art & Historical Center All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photography, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

The Kings County Savings Bank Building, 1867, King & Wilcox, Architects A New York City landmark (1966) and on the National Register of Historic Places (1980)

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A Word from the Founder T

HIS EXHIBIT honors those who have traveled a golden path in the arts with creative insights, energy, strong commitment and endurance, and who can be looked upon as a model of the highest ideals. These people, my mentors, have honored me with their friendship and their spiritual and artistic guidance, and have been essential in the development of my ideals and career, especially in the establishment of the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center. To see others who have gone before and gone through great struggles, and who have overcome obstacles and hardships, helps and inspires the younger generation to pursue their own ideal goals.

The first five years have presented many challenges on the road to creating a new major art institution, accommodating artistic demands within our limited resources. Even during those difficult times, the wisdom I learned from my mentors never escaped me. The accumulated wisdom was a sustaining force behind me.

As Jack Lenor Larsen demonstrated, in order to realize one’s vision, one must do much of the work by oneself to make sure that each small detail is in place. From Isamu Noguchi, I learned that one must not limit one’s boundaries, but have an open view of the world to face challenges in many new directions. Jerry Rudquist taught me what it was to be a good leader, “never discourage, rather encourage others.” From Toshiko Takaezu, I learned that while exploring the bridging of Eastern and Western traditions and the synthesis of many artistic disciplines, one must take only the essentials, and balance them most harmoniously. The wonderful creative couple, Ansei and Toshiko Uchima, taught me that in creating something, “don’t waste time arguing; it only results in exhaustion, to no good end. Work lovingly!” And Esteban Vicente taught me, one must work “persistently and consistently, with sureness of heart and mind.” And I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to my greatest friends and mentors, my parents, who have provided me comfort and security, as well as deep love and understanding throughout my life, and who taught me values,

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respect, and broadmindedness. So I tried to apply what I have learned from my wise friends and mentors.

The WAH Center has survived the first five years thanks also to many kind, generous and understanding people, such as artists, staff, volunteers, individual donors, local business people, some foundations, local government agencies and political leaders, who had faith in what I was doing, and who supported the Center spiritually and financially. Also I thank the New York City Landmark Commission and the New York Landmark Conservancy for their initiative in helping to preserve our landmark building. I want to especially thank New York State Governor George Pataki, who named me a “Woman of Excellence, Vision and Courage,” and Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden, who honored me as one of Brooklyn’s Women of the Year, for their spiritual support and encouragement over the past five years.

In 2001 Governor Pataki said in his proclamation: “In the past five years, you (Yuko Nii) have inspired and encouraged the careers of many artists, staged exhibits and performances, created art education programs and nurtured relationships between art lovers and artists through annual Cultural Festivals. Admirers have written of your gifts as an artist, as a creative visionary and as a patron of other artistic individuals.”

In 1998 Howard Golden said in his citation: “Brooklyn pays tribute to Yuko Nii, critically acclaimed painter and Founder of the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, a woman whose devotion to her art and commitment to the artist community of Williamsburg/Greenpoint are unparalleled.”

In celebration of our fifth anniversary, the WAH Center presents the “Friends & Mentors” exhibit.

Yuko Nii, Founder & Artistic Director

The Anomaly of the Compounded Self The Material Influence of the Mentor

by Mark Daniel Cohen

To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

— e e cummings

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OR WE ARE OSMOTIC BEINGS, being porous organisms, animals who seep into each other, blend and bleed and pour their very natures through to those they most engross. We enter at the skin, know each other better than we tell, and we are known. Our inward selves — our biases, our joys, enthusiasms, horrors, and our loves — drift like ghosts and grapple to their hold into each others’ souls. The color of the sightless air between ourselves is tinged and stung with rolling fogs of inclinations, moving fumes and exhalations of our urges, inklings, passions and disconsolations, and unearthly understandings, which we steam beyond ourselves and spread to secret influences — all of us becoming all of us. And swirls and turning arcs of smoke and funnel clouds and wisps of whispers storm and drizzle into, and we hear the hidden pulses of the inner atmospheres, and we become the very things we feel. We rain ourselves upon ourselves, for we are intimately one another.

We are the prey and recourse for each other, the security and the nakedly insecure who must fight to be ourselves, for we are born inconclusively. The self comes into the world as fractional, it enters incomplete, a dissonance of attributes. The psychologist C. G. Jung once observed: the thought that the psyche, unless otherwise tampered with, is in good working order is a great error. Our natures are, by their natures, less than fully accomplished. And so it is the business of a life to complete the psyche, to finalize the soul and make it functional and some-

thing fulfilled — to create the comprehensive spirit that will be our finished selves.

And so, to construct ourselves we rely upon each other. We draw upon the influence we offer by our very natures, by the very nature that requires the influence. As the child becomes much of what the parent is, becomes through sheer exposure, so we build what we transform into, what we fill in and organize, by whom we know most well — an expansion of the personality throughout the expanse of life. We are for each other the resources we employ across the life-long project of constituting a life. And the thoughtful persons, the persons who would live the deliberate life, will select their influences, will pull from the best of those they find about them. It is the anomaly of the individual life — we become distinctive individuals by selecting those who will affect us, and we choose our dependencies by judgments that are distinctively our own. The individual is the compiling of unique and admirable, advantageous imitations.

It is the natural and irresistible function of friends: to make us the best we may be, to keep us through their proximity to our highest aspirations and our most valuable courses — to guide us by making us who we are and by becoming whom we help them to be. And the mentor is the strongest form of friendship and the greatest acceleration of self-definition, for it is the greatest influence. Mentors are the people to whom

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we turn for wisdom. The word “mentor” indicates the intrinsic and authentic prestige, the intended caliber of affect. Mentor is a character in “The Odyssey” of Homer — he is the old friend of Odysseus whom the hero left behind to serve as an advisor to Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, and his was the aspect worn

by Athena, the goddess of wisdom, when she came to earth to guide Odysseus.

In the exhibition “Mentors and Friends,” Yuko Nii has selected works of art and craft created by those people she has found to be and has made mentors in her life. They are a remarkable group — Isamu Noguchi, Esteban Vicente, Jack Larsen, Toshiko Takaezu, Jerry Rudquist, Ansei Uchima, and Toshiko Uchima.

All are creative minds, active in their fields, many of them broadly influential, with distinctive styles and a serious command of their methods and materials. All are intimately present in their creations, extending their deeper selves into what they make, impressing their personal influence onto what they touch. All are characteristic choices.

All are creative minds, but the quality of their proximity lies in something more than their capability to influence one in one’s creative work. Ask Yuko, as I have, what she means by a “mentor,” and she will talk of something other, and something far more significant, than stylistic instigation. She speaks of learning, of listening to each of these people, closely and carefully, and of what she characterizes as “spiritual guidance” — the deeper things one human being can grant another.

For all their similarities, there are enormous differences among the works of these mentors. In terms of media and materials and artistic aspirations, in terms of the art forms they practice and in which they make themselves felt, there is almost nothing that is shared by all. And this lack of visual commonality gives an illuminating set of questions: What is the common element among all these selections? In what way can all and specifically these people be mentors for a single, particular, articulated human being? By what standard were all of them selected, by what were they recognized? What does their array reveal to us of the very principle of mentoring?

It is the multiplicity itself, the internal complexity of these choices from every angle of analysis, that is the key to the principle of their organization, to the common thread that laces them. It is the galaxy they make that is their principal lesson to those of us first encountering their works together here, unknown to us as a group before now. There is no logical relation containing them all, but there is more to the world than the logical. There is also the psychological. The geometry of their relation, the principle of gravitation that holds these choices together and makes them a natural group, natural to her who has found them and chosen them out, is the principle of gravi-

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tation that holds together a human personality. The structural complexity of these names and of their works when seen together is the structural complexity of a human psyche, it is the law of comprehension of the soul — a law of nature, of human nature.

Taken together, the grouping of these people, reflected in the grouping of their works in this exhibition, is also a reflection of a particular human psyche, and in that is the principle of their recognition. As anyone who has found a mentor is aware, in most instances no choice was consciously made, no process of thought led to a decision. Most often, one does not discover a need and then seek out someone capable of answering it.

Rather, one meets someone and simply knows the moment, recognizes it — the meeting, the person met, just feels right. No conscious reflection leads to and determines the moment, for the moment is itself a reflection: You see yourself in the other — you find your personality transformed and reflected, nevertheless recognizable, in that mirror.

And what is that mirror? In what way can one person be the key to the personality of another? It can be so because the influence we exert, the osmotic power we exercise and the susceptibility we labor under, is not lawless. There is something within us that is distinctive, there from the very beginning, inchoate and incipient. There is something of us about us always, and it has a gravitation, the gravitation that will hold the complexity of the future personality together and that draws to us those whom we most need, and who can do for us the greatest possible good. There is an instinct in us to recognize them as they approach, and a capability to waste the opportunity, to fail to respond, to put aside the benefit we may enjoy.

To all appearances, Yuko has chosen well. But to admire the works in this exhibition and those who made them is not to understand. What is the principle of gravitation here? Why these people in this instance?

We can know only what we can see, and by sight, what we may feel. For this is an understanding that is beyond knowledge — as everything of the knowing mind is beyond the knowledge of the knowing mind. But we may, through these works, comprehend something of the quality of the complexity they make. We may, through the material impress of these personalities, obtain some awareness of their material effect on those who would learn from them.

Isamu Noguchi and Esteban Vicente are two of the premier artists of recent times. Noguchi — the sculptor, and without question one of the most significant sculptors of the twentieth century — was the creator of soft and anomalous abstract forms, such as his Blue and Black Interior Landscape, 1959-1981,

that gently curve and oddly stand in a fashion that is always both strangely disturbing and yet delicately beckoning — abstract and without a worldly reference but nevertheless never far from organic forms and substances, as we see in his Emergence, 1971. Vicente — the painter, and one of the longest surviving members of the Abstract Expressionist generation — was a pure abstractionist, rendering compositions of brilliant hues that are both geometric and gestural, both intellectual and emotional, paintings that coalesce the thoughts and the feelings into something that is nearly a model of the mind in balance, all its capabilities in conjunction. We know the mood of the work as much as we observe the principles by which its composition has been resolved.

Jack Larsen, a weaver and designer of fine hand-woven fabrics, is as renowned in his field as are Noguchi and Vicente.

As one observes them, his intricate innovations seem to play against the skin just as they play against the light, and his creations have been collected by such museums as the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He is also the founder of the LongHouse Reserve — a foundation that is housed in a building in East Hampton based on the design of a seventh-century Shinto shrine and that maintains a program supporting the visual and performing arts. The relation to Yuko’s efforts for the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center is clear.

The ceramist Toshiko Takaezu straddles the conventional and ill-considered conceptions that distinguish and separate the arts from the crafts. Her signature form of the closed vessel, painted in atmospherically infused and suffusing abstract patterns of glazed colors, is both a functional shape, maximizing the decorative surface, and at the same time as if something alive, some elemental form of life, as elemental as the clay from which it has been raised — alive and inexplicably aware. Jerry Rudquist’s beautifully drawn and rendered paintings are of life as well, but life at the other side. Based on the human figure, they are life at its most advanced, for that is what and all the human figure means in art: life as far as it may go. And, unlike Takaezu’s sense of life at the start, as the germinal, Rudquist’s life is at the end: at the point of mutation and abomination, as in Head and Figure - Blue Surprise, 1996, or the point of postmortem dissolution, as with Flesh Leg, 1970.

Ansei Uchima, husband of Toshiko Uchima, was a printmaker who on occasions turned to oil painting. Devoted to the classic manner of Japanese woodblock color prints, his works set transparencies of gem-like hues into harmonic relations of primary and secondary colors, building up the implications of individuated forms within abstract patterns, as in Forest Byobu

Autumn, 1977, or establishing simplified landscape vistas, such as In Blue – Dai, 1974, which reside in the eye with an otherworldly atmosphere, as if found deep in the recesses of the lyrical mind. Toshiko Uchima, wife of Ansei Uchima, renders a similar lyricism in a different manner. Working primarily in box assemblages, she creates scenarios that are like miniature worlds in some breathless space — interiorized, inscape vistas, as in Festival di Avignon, 1979, that possess a poetic evocation one cannot identify but which one cannot help but feel.

The complexity to the spectrum of these works when seen together, the constellation they make, is keyed to a single common element. They are all marked by an individuality, a self-reliance and a dependency on inner vision and personal impulse, a dependency on a drive for independence, that is something other than a simple single-mindedness, for as we can see in their compilation, the mind is not simple or single.

But it may be committed, and every artist here is an exemplar of personal commitment. Jack Larsen once observed that “personal environment must support our need for identity.” It may be said that personal environment is more than fabrics and arts, more than colors and crafts and forms and compositions. It is also, and perhaps most urgently, the people to whom we are drawn and whom we draw to us. The independence of the soul is the gift we may best obtain from our dependency on influence, if we choose wisely in our magnetisms, if we are lucky in our coincidences, and if we learn what is taught in this exhibition, what has been made evident by Yuko Nii in her display of the works of her mentors — grapple yourself to those whom you should treasure: “Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.” g

Mark Daniel Cohen is a New York City-based art writer, essayist, sculptor, graphic designer, and the Director of the Drew Semester on Contemporary Art at Drew University, Madison, NJ. He writes regularly for NY Arts and Art New England, and is a contributor to Sculpture magazine, Art Journal, contemporary visual arts, Linea: Journal of the Art Students League of New York, Provincetown Arts, and ARTnews. He is also a contributor to the second edition of Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes by Richard Kostelanetz, published January 2000.

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Jack Lenor Larsen Reminiscence by Yuko Nii

JACK LENOR LARSEN

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ACK LENOR LARSEN, (b. 1929) from Seattle, WA, enrolled in 1945 at School of Architecture, University of Washington.

From 1946-47 he studied furniture design, started to weave, and moved to Los Angeles to concentrate on fabric. In 1949 he returned to Seattle to study ancient Peruvian fabrics, and opened a studio. From 1950-51 he attended Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI, earned M.F.A., and opened his New York City studio.

From 1959 onward Jack Lenor Larsen has filled important roles such as Designer and Director of traveling exhibition, Fabrics International: visited West Africa, Morocco and the Transvaal, Design Director and U.S. Commissioner, XIII Trienale di Milano, Co-director, “The Art Fabric: Mainstream” traveling exhibition opening at the San Francisco Museum of Art, etc., and curated many important shows at major museums including The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Textile Museum in Wash., DC., etc. He has also filled roles on numerous boards, such as Chairman of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Vice President of the Architectural League of New York, and President of the American Crafts Council, NY, among others. He was also an artist in residence at the Royal College of Art, London.

Jack Lenor Larsen founded the firm that bears his name in 1952.

Over the past five decades, Larsen, the Company has grown steadily to become a dominant resource for signature fabrics for the international design trade. The “Larsen Look” began with Mr. Larsen’s award-winning hand woven fabrics of varied natural yarns in random repeats, and has evolved to become synonymous with modern 20th century design at its pinnacle of style and sophistication. Since the merger between Larsen and Cowtan & Tout, the USA subsidiary of Co efax and Fowler, Jack Larsen remains a design consultant to the group and continues to play a key role in the development of new designs.

More than a weaver, Mr. Larsen is a scholar, author, gardener, world traveler, and one of the world’s foremost authorities on contemporary crafts. His home, LongHouse, located on 16 acres in East Hampton, New York, was built as a case study exemplifying a creative approach to contemporary life style.

He believes the visitor experiencing art in a living space has a learning experience far removed from the commercial priorities of model rooms or show houses.

A good friend of mine, Anita Corey, used to invite me as a weekend guest to her beautiful country house in Bridgehampton, Long Island, until she sold the house recently. It was during the summer of 1989 that Anita said to me,”let’s go to a lotus garden party in East Hampton.” She tends to say these things spontaneously and casually without much explanation as to whose house we were going to, and so, I did not ask.

Cherry blossoms, lilies, lotus and chrysanthemums have meant so much to me since childhood, for in Japan we have special seasonal celebrations for gardens and parks in full bloom. Also my family used to look forward to these special outings to observe the beauty, soak up the aromas and enjoy the atmosphere. So, I was quite curious to find out what this lotus garden party was all about.

When we arrived at the party, many guests were scattered about or gathering in the garden, enjoying the party. The beautiful lotus flowers in the pond were in full bloom, welcoming guests. I was a bit

surprised to notice the size – while everything in this country is so much larger, such as sunflowers, eggplants and cucumbers, his lotus flowers and leaves were smaller than those in Japan. The Japanese lotus pads are so big we can almost sit on its pad like Buddha.

I was introduced to the party’s host, Jack Lenor Larsen, the world renowned weaver, a scholar of textile design and expert on contemporary crafts. His house was the most impressive and exotic one I ever saw in this country. The shape of the house was totally round, not conventionally square, and the materials inside and outside were all natural wood and fiber, which reminded me of some houses I had seen in Thailand, Indonesia, or Africa, or even American Indian Teepees. His house had a cozy atmosphere, warm in winter and cool in summer, with beautiful textile, crafts and art objects surrounding the interior. Jack named it ”Round House.”

In 1991 Jack built another house called “LongHouse” on a 16 acre lot in East Hampton, not too far from the “Round House.” This Long-

Mr. Larsen’s most recent book. Jack Lenor Larsen: A Weaver’s Memoir, was published by Harry N. Abrams in the fall of 1998. g

Known as an innovator in fabric design, Larsen has won many awards, including Gold Medal XIII Trienale di Milano, Gold Medal, American Institute of Architects, Brooklyn Museum Design Award for Lifetime Achievement, American Craft Council, Gold Medal Award, etc. He is also a recipient of Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, Honorary Royal Designer for Industry, Royal Society of Arts London, etc., and is one of the four Americans ever to be honored with an exhibition in the Palais du Louvre. His work is in many permanent collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, NY, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Stedelijk Museum of Art, Amsterdam, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, The Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Archives of American Art, Wash., DC, Museum Bellerive, Zurich, Kunstindustrietmuseum, Copenhagen, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, NY, Fashion Institute of Technology, NY, Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, Musee’ des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, etc.

Yuko Nii and Jack Lenore Larsen at Cowtan and Tout • Larsen Design Studio, 5/23/01

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House is another impressively unique house, which structurally looks like a Japanese Shinto temple from the outside, but inside is spacious and airy. He established the LongHouse Foundation (now called the LongHouse Reserve) for his enduring deep interest and belief in creativity. The house displays crafts and art in the interior space, while outside bridges gardening, landscape and sculpture as art forms. During the summer season, performance art takes place, so that one can experience living pleasures in relation to living spaces in time, which is also a pleasure in learning.

In this large acreage, with numerous plants, shrubs, flowers and trees planted according to Jack’s design, Jack himself labors to do much of the gardening. In Spring time 10,000 baby daffodils bloom all over! It has always been a great pleasure to visit Jack’s place. All of the senses are awakened, for it is visually intriguing and mentally stimulating, physically energizing, yet spiritually restful...a living sanctuary.

Jack had enormous vision to establish the multifaceted art institution bridging art and craft, traditional and contemporary from all over the world, interior and exterior, bringing us the totality of ideal living experience. His institution is a testimony to his deep interest and strong commitment to pursue his vision with his refined and sophisticated taste, and keen judgment, besides hard work. When I was thinking about founding my own WAH Center, Jack’s creation inspired me. The Founder of such an enterprise must attend to each small detail to see a good result. Jack is a giant as an artist, remarkable world visionary and a builder of a great institution. .

“Silk Squared,” 100% silk, w. 48 in., weight 10 oz., origin - Thailand, woven fabric design ©2001 by Jack Lenor Larsen

“Onward,” 70% silk, 30% linen, w. 48 in., weight 9 oz., origin - Thailand, woven fabric design ©1997 by Jack Lenor Larsen

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Isamu Noguchi Reminiscence by Yuko Nii

ISAMU NOGUCHI

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SAMU NOGUCHI was born in Los Angeles in 1904, raised in Japan from 1906-17, returned to USA in 1918 to finish his education, and pursued his career as a sculptor from 1924 until his death in 1988.

Sunken Garden for Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York City, and many others. He also designed playgrounds for Kodomono-kuni (Children’s Land) near Tokyo, Playscapes for Piedmont Park, Atlanta, GA, etc.

Noguchi was the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, such as the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, The New York State Governor’s Art Award, The Japanese-American Citizen’s League Biennial Award, the Israel Museum Fellowship in Jerusalem, the President’s Medal of Honor from the Municipal Art Society, National Medal of Arts from President Ronald Reagan, Granted the Third Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Japanese Government, among many others.

Noguchi created some monumental fountains, such as the Horace E. Dodge and Son Memorial Fountain in Detroit, MI, nine Fountains for Expo ‘70, Osaka, Japan, Intetra, Mist Fountain for Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL, just to name a few, and several memorials, such as Bolt of Lightning...memorial to Ben Franklin, Philadelphia, PA, and designed two concrete peace bridges (Yuku: “to depart” and Tsukuru: “to build”) in Peace Park, Hiroshima, Japan.

Besides many major museum shows, such as Museum of Modern Art, NY, Whitney Museum, NY, Walker Art Center.

MN, the Denver Art Museum, CO, the Cleveland Museum, OH, the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, etc., he is also known for his large scale public projects and environmental works, such as the Sunken Garden for the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, The Billy Rose Sculpture Garden in Jerusalem, The Japanese Garden and Delegate’s Patio for the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, the

In 1985 Noguchi designed The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in Long Island City, New York, to house his work, and carefully placed each sculpture himself. In this tranquil setting, across the street from his studio, Isamu Noguchi presents his work for the public to enjoy.

Noguchi also created an outdoor garden at his studio, open to the public, in Mure, Shikoku, Japan. And in 1988 he designed a master plan for a 400 acre park for Sapporo, Japan (still ongoing project under direction of Shoji Sadao).

His career took him around the world many times, from an apprenticeship in Paris to long periods of carving stones in Italy and Japan. But New York was Noguchi’s home, and many of his works were created here. In addition to his sculptures of stone, wood and metal, he created over 20 (1935-66) stage sets for choreographer Martha Graham, and designed furniture, and paper and bamboo lamps that he called “Akari light sculptures.”

Noguchi’s approach to art was based on his belief that the experience of art depends on the quality of the space in which it is seen. g

“Emergence,” 6 elements, overall dimensions 5.5 X 19 X 19 inches, 1971 agi granite stone sculpture

by Isamu Noguchi

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I first met Mr. Isamu Noguchi in early 1976 at a party held by my architect friend on the upper east side of Manhattan. By the time I arrived, the house was full of guests and filled with much noise.I was the last one in line waiting for a buffet dinner to be served. It was so noisy that no one could have exchanged a decent conversation. But suddenly there was a break of total silence. I thought somebody was about to make a speech. Evidently that was when Mr. Isamu Noguchi made his appearance, and his presence made everyone go silent. I did not know then, but later I realized that “in a great person’s presence, total silence is the symbol of ‘respect and awe’.”

Isamu Noguchi, Yuko Nii, and Tamasaburo, renowned actor of female roles in Japan’s GRAND KABUKI THEATER, at the Japan Society, 5/3/84

While I was looking for a chair to sit down, an elderly looking gentleman with a plate in his hand approached me, and asked me if he could sit with me. Immediately two people stood up and offered us their chairs. The gentleman asked me quite a few questions, as to what my name was, what I do, and other questions about my background. When I answered his questions, he told me he recalled my name and the stone image of my painting printed on an announcement someone gave him. I was totally shocked and, at a loss for words when I found out that the gentleman I was speaking to was the great sculptor, Mr. Isamu Noguchi.

Later we talked so much in Japanese and English that I could not meet, nor talk to anyone else at the party. He asked me if I would like to visit his studio the next day on Sunday. Since I already had an appointment, I asked him for another day. But he said that he would have to leave for Japan soon, and if I canceled my other appointment, it would be good. So, I canceled my previous appointment, and visited his studio in Long Island City. First he took me to his studio, and led me through his building across the street. I was so struck with his abundant works standing quietly in a huge building - each work commanding great power and strength. Viewing all of them took about two hours. I was totally overwhelmed (in a special, delightful way). The experience absorbed my entire being. I was taken into an eternal world of time and space, before and after our existence.

Mr. Noguchi observed me carefully while I viewed his work, and answered my questions. Out of all conversations, the most striking answer he gave me was “a stone or piece of wood comes to me, and

asks me to cut or chisel here and there. While contemplating the new material before me, I wait until it speaks to me, and I respond to the inner voice of the material very naturally, but actually it’s a conversation with myself.” I thought then that it was like the “Zen spirit” where one’s self and the object become one with each other.

By the time I finished viewing his works, a late lunch was ready in the dining room where Mr. and Mrs. I.M. Pei (international architect) and their son were also invited. We had interesting conversations as to the future of architecture relating to sculpture in space and time. The conversation was in good humor and we were served a delicious lunch...the lunch together with my private viewing of this great giant’s work – an unforgettable day was just about to end.

Before I was about to leave, Mr. Noguchi asked me if he could visit my studio the next day. I hesitated, for my studio was so small, full of my paintings and not presentable. I told him I needed to clean the studio. He said, “Never mind, I will come.” So, he did. He viewed my work for about two hours very quietly, and in the end he summed up by saying that most of the artists express work about stones, emphasizing the seemingly immutable stone nature of weight and strength. But he said, “Your stone carries energy instead of weight, and creates a mysterious other worldly atmosphere with movement, rhythm, and dynamism. This is hard to achieve. You have a special vision that is larger than life and with great technical execution.”

Later he asked me how I supported myself. I told him that I was

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teaching at a private high school. He said, “Immediately stop teaching. You are wasting your time. Just paint!” Actually I was already thinking about quitting teaching soon, and pursuing my career as an artist seriously. Isamu left for Japan the next day, staying for three or four months.

I got a call from him upon his return, and he invited me to dinner at a restaurant. He asked me if I could be his assistant. I thanked him for his kind offer by saying, “I am sure that I could learn a lot from you during my assistantship, but I know you will make tremendous demands upon me, as such I would not have time to paint.

Remember? You suggested before that I should ‘just paint.’” He said, “In other words, you are rejecting my offer. My works have been rejected many times in the past, but this is the first time someone rejected an offer to be my assistant. Everybody wants to work for me!”

Ever since that time, we became much closer friends, and he asked me to call him Isamu, and not Mr. Noguchi. We began going out to interesting current events together which he would not have done otherwise, since he was so busy with his own projects. He also took me to some events that I would not have known about or been invited to. He came to see my shows, stage set productions and costume designs which I created for some dance and theater companies. After I quit teaching, I enjoyed all of the creative activities I had always wanted to pursue. Not only painting, but also dance, stage and costume design, writing and graphic design.

Isamu often asked me if my work sold, and my answer was most often “no.” He said, “That is a good sign – if you start selling your work, it has already gotten to the level of the common denominator’s taste.” Maybe he was comforting me by saying so.

As his projects kept him busier and busier, he started saying,”I have a good excuse to escape from some commitments, for I was born in the year of the dragon which does not exist on earth. It only exists in the mind of the beholder. I do not have to deal with reality.”

Isamu introduced me to Martha Graham at her Carnegie Hall performance. Isamu later asked me, after having seen several of my stage set and costume designs, if I would like to work for her, since she was looking for a stage set and costume designer. Again I told him that to be her company’s designer, I would have to commit myself totally, going all over the world with her company. It would be one of the greatest opportunities to work for such a renowned dancer and choreographer as Martha Graham, but I was enjoying my freedom working as a free lance artist. I had so much to learn from the great variety of theater, dance companies and other creative fields, covering many different media and concepts. “There is nothing like being your own boss,” he said to me.”Clearly, you do not like being a slave. I understand that, and respect that. You are truly an independent artist!.” But, he asked,” If I need help some time in the future, could I ask you for help as a free lance assistant?” I said gladly, “Yes!”

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The occasion came in 1978 when he was in the hospital with a back operation, and could not finish the Akari lamp project for the upcoming traveling show. At his request I went to the garment district to choose special silk material for his biggest hanging lamp.

He was very pleased by what I chose, and I made a shade with the material. I attended the opening of his traveling show “Noguchi’s Imaginary Landscapes” at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the “Akari” show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Crafts Museum in Los Angeles.

In December 1988, before my trip to Japan, I called Isamu to say, “goodbye.” He told me that he had a slight cold and was very tired.

“But I’ll be O.K.” he said. I told him that he should not take a cold very lightly, especially an elderly person, since it could or might lead to pneumonia. He said, “If I die, my work lives. Carry my spirit alive and well! Call me when you come back.” I said,“Of course, I will,” and hung up the phone with a great uneasy feeling but wishing for his quick recovery.

Even though he was seemingly having a full life, with his many ongoing projects, he hinted once in a while that he was lonely. To balance this he chose collaborative projects which interested him a great deal. But he inevitably and willingly isolated himself from intimate human contact, due to his demanding projects, and because he did not want, or could not afford, to be tangled in personal relationships. By socializing too much you lose the time and energy to pursue what you want. It is a dilemma for many.

Upon my arrival in Japan, the entire Japanese media was spreading the news of the Showa Emperor’s serious health condition which worsened every day toward the end of the year. On the news December 30th, I also heard that Mr. Isamu Noguchi died of pneumonia in a New York hospital. The Showa Emperor’s era and Isamu ended. In reaction to Isamu’s death, I was speechless and motionless in a pitch dark world, as if a black hand had snatched the breath of life from me.

Though he died, his work lives stronger than ever, with his spirit alive and well.

Isamu especially seemed to enjoy going out to see the younger generation’s art scenes...avant garde dance and theater performances, to which I often invited him. On one occasion we went to see dancers who were wearing underwear only. In jest, he said, “Those dancers are so poor they cannot even afford a costume designer for a decent costume. They could not even afford to go to a laundry to clean their underwear. How the world has changed!

And those dancers do not even move too much, they are saving energy.”

I remember so well the way he walked, the way he moved his body, the way he talked, the way he showed displeasure or anger, or contentment and happiness. His work is a total mirror of him, and his work varies in material, style and scale...his works’ expression is infinitely variable.

I had invited Isamu to come along to my friend’s “disco” party. We enjoyed the atmosphere so much Isamu started dancing with me, saying, ”Now I can say, I’ve ‘disco’ danced!” I liked his ever-lasting young spirit, and spontaneous behavior and curiosity.

I was hospitalized and operated on December 10, 1980. Late at night, I received a phone call from Isamu. He said, “Yuko, I have two pieces of sad news I want to tell you. First, you are in the hospital.

Another is that John Lennon was shot and killed today.” He continued to say that he would like to visit me. Since I could not talk due to tubes inserted into my mouth and body, I jotted down a note saying, “I’ll see you, when I get out of the hospital.” The nurse read that note to him over the phone. The next day, a beautiful bouquet of flowers was sent to me together with a note from him. How thoughtful!

While we were together, we often joked that we did not know how to take things seriously. So, we had to say to each other, “This is a serious matter!” One serious occasion was one night before his talk at MoMA. He called me after 11 P.M. to my surprise. He told me that he did not know what to talk about. He was suffering from stage fright. The next day was the slide presentation of his work and his speech. He looked very pale, and his voice was indeed trembling.

Thus, I also saw his vulnerability.

face challenges in many new directions, so one can be inspired, and can develop deep layers of inner experience for one’s own further growth and humanity. Don’t limit your boundaries!

Thus, as you see, I have followed my mentor’s advice,”face the challenges in many new directions...don’t limit your boundaries, ” and I have opened an art center. I sometimes think, however, that if Isamu could see what I am doing now, he might say,”Yuko, you did not follow my advice! You should quit the art center and just paint. You are wasting time!!” .

From birth Isamu bridged East and West, and his life experiences, in both the East and West, were reflected in his life style.

With regard to his identity, people identified him as an American when in Japan and a Japanese when in America. He knew that he did not belong to either group. He knew he was universal. He lived and worked in New York City in an urban environment, and in Japan on the island of Shikoku, in a quiet country setting, where I was once invited. Isamu understood the roots of both the East and the West, and screened only the very essential wisdom from both to apply to his creations.

I could never express with words how fortunate I was to know him. I learned numerous life lessons from him. Each learning experience was an inspiration and great inspiration for my strength and growth as an artist and as a human being. The most important lesson I learned from him was that apart from talent and strength (endurance, commitment, resilience and hard work), an artist must have an open view of the world to

“Black & Blue, Interior Landscape,” 2 elements: 94 X 30 X 31 in., 40 lbs., and 13 X 47 X 29 in., 25 lbs., 1959-81 aluminum by Isamu Noguchi

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Jerry Rudquist Reminiscence by Yuko Nii

JERRY RUDQUIST

From 1961-63 I attended Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo Japan, studying American English literature. I was dissatisfied and unhappy with the University, since in the back of my mind was a big dream, a wish to be an artist. So, I left my country for the USA, a big country,“the land of opportunity,” and a country of freedom and democracy.

In 1963 I entered Macalaster College, St. Paul, Minnesota majoring in fine arts. I stayed there until I earned my BFA in painting in 1965.

These were hard years for me trying to adjust to a new life, trying to overcome language, cultural barriers, and trying to become accustom to the extreme climate so different from Japan. I remember the vast flat land of corn fields, with no mountain views, no art and cultural institutions or galleries, no shopping sprees to enjoy, no easily accessible transportation, and the land of “Wonder Bread and chicken.” What saved me was the good hearted, genuinely kind people, and most importantly my study of art.

“Head and Figure/Blue Surprise,” 30 X 40 in., 1996 acrylic on rag board by Jerry Rudquist

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ERRY RUDQUIST (b. 1934), from Fargo, ND, has been on the faculty of Macalester College, St. Paul, MN, since 1958 teaching painting and printmaking. He currently has completed his teaching career and is artist-in-residence at Macalester. He received a B.F.A. in painting from Minneapolis College of Art and Design, MN, in 1956 and an M.F.A. in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI, in 1958.

Rudquist’s work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Chicago Art Institute; Chase Manhattan Bank, NYC; Osaka University of Arts, Japan; the Walker Art Center; the Minneapolis Institute of Art and in other collections.

Rudquist’s work has been shown in one person and group exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and in a variety of museums and galleries in the United States and in Germany, Italy, Iceland, and Finland. “Rudquist/ Reconsidering” a traveling exhibition of seventy of his paint-

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ings, prints and drawings was shown in four locations in Minnesota in 1996-98. The exhibition focused on very early work (including school work) and recent pieces reexploring and developing themes and attitudes created in the early work.

Rudquist’s work is scheduled to be shown in a one person exhibition at the Groveland Gallery, Minneapolis in the fall of 2002.

Recently he has completed a series of 15 monotypes in collaboration with master printer Steven Andersen at the Akasha Print Workshop, Minneapolis.

A film about his work was created in 1971 by Dan Paris in collaboration with a one-person exhibition of his work at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and a video “The Painted Eye”was created by Mike Hazard in 1997 for an exhibition at the Rourke Art Museum in Moorhead, MN. g

My painting professor, Mr. Jerry Rudquist, stood out as one of the most influential teachers I ever met in my whole life. Knowing I was a new foreign student, he keenly sensed my need to be guided. But the way he approached or taught his students was quite unique, with great sensitivity, in a quiet and delicate manner, not like many other professors who intended to force or influence their students with dogmas and ideas. With just a few words, Mr. Rudquist hinted or suggested something which helped us realize or awaken some other possibilities to open a window or new door for us to enter.

One day he brought me a big canvas and said, “Yuko, you might like to paint on this canvas, and if so, you might like to be in a bigger studio.” So, he kindly provided me with a big canvas and a big studio, and left me alone. Facing the big, approximately 5 foot by 6 foot canvas, my heart started pounding, and my body trembled at first. Then I started feeling a great freedom, as if my entire being opened up and expanded with enormous energy. I painted and painted with no conscious mind. I lost myself in the painting, and afterwards, with great satisfaction, I said to myself “This is what I always wanted.”

Jerry Rudquist, 1963

Mr. Rudquist came back a week later smiling “Oh Yuko, you did it, you are an abstract expressionist. You became an American at heart.” Yes, he was right, I felt myself belonging to America, assimilating with the land and culture and people. For the first time I felt a sense of connection!

Because my studio was next to his studio, I was able to peek in to

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see his paintings. It was a revelation! His paintings with strong force and energy came right at me and hit me straight on, very contrary to his quiet personality. Those abstract images done with brush and knife reminded me of some three dimensional objects such as bones or other structures. He mixed purest strong colors, and sometimes used black or dark strokes, hinting or suggesting shadow. The forms popped out, or seemingly hung beyond the canvas boundaries. By using his own bright red, blue, green, gray or beige as background, he was able to indicate that the forms were suspended in space. So powerful, yet mysterious that I could not get away from his paintings. I have never forgotten the particular feeling I received from his paintings. I was always curious to find where those images came from, and to find out what was in his mind.

enough opportunity and space to breath. As such, students could freely and independently choose their ways to find answers to what they were looking for in order to grow further. After all, art is your own expression, and your own business. It is the true liberty that nobody should take away from you. It is one of the highest sacred gifts given, to choose as a means, not as an end, to discover who you are in relation to others and the world in this particular time and space. .

Naturally my paintings have changed according to my experiences, emotions and thoughts, but my paintings remained abstract, for I felt I could no longer express my felt life in a representational manner. Retrospectively speaking, I must have been searching for my inner self.

I was very fortunate to have such a special art teacher at an early stage of becoming an artist. I consider Jerry Rudquist, even today, one of the most profound and respected teachers and mentors I have ever met. He taught me what it was to be a good teacher and what was essentially important for an artist. He never discouraged or criticized his students. Instead, he gave them or allowed them

“Spectator,” 48 X 40 in., 1962 oil on canvas by Jerry Rudquist, collection of Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota

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“Must We Always Expect War/Russia,” 15 X 20.75 in.,1996 oil on board by Jerry Rudquist

“Moving Man/Hummer,” 41 X 29.5 in.,1971 stone lithograph on Rives BFK paper by Jerry Rudquist

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Toshiko Takaezu MI, Honolulu Academy of Arts, HI, Hunterdon Museum, NJ, LongHouse Foundation, E.H.,NY, Montclair Art Museum, NJ, Morris Gallery at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, PA, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan, Philbrook Museum of Art, OK, Tampa Museum, FL, and some private galleries, including the Charles Cowles Gallery, NYC, Frank Lloyd Gallery, CA, and Perimeter Gallery, IL, and others. She has also had numerous two person shows, including the Cleveland Institute of Art, OH, New Jersey State Museum, NJ, Honolulu Academy of Art, HI, Sawmill Gallery, Madison University, VA, etc. Additionally she has had numerous group shows.

Takaezu is in many outstanding museum collections such as the American Crafts Museum, NY, Art Institute of Chicago, IL, Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, Cleveland Museum of Art, OH, Contemporary Museum, HI, Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI, Detroit Institute of Art, MI, Everson Museum, NY, Honolulu Academy of Art, HI, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Milwaukee Art Museum, WI, Museum of Fine Arts, MA, National

Museum, Bangkok, Thailand, Newark Museum of Art, NJ, Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA, Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Wash., DC, Toledo Museum of Art, OH., Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, WI, etc.

Takaezu has also been written about in numerous publications, books, catalogues, periodicals and news[papers.

As Bruce W. Pepich, Director of the Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, WI, writes in a catalog for one of Toshiko’s exhibits at the Perimeter Gallery in Chicago, IL, “Takaezu is a painter in glaze, a sculptor in clay, and a ceramicist who honors many traditions, while following her own voice. Because of these multiple roles, she occupies a unique place in contemporary ceramics. Her quiet forms, with their enlivened surfaces, claim sole allegiance to neither ceramic camp.Takaezu remains in both the functional and sculptural worlds on her own terms, and we are the better for it.” g

Left to right: “UNTITLED,” 23.25 X 12 in. diam., 1993; “MOMO,” 23.25 X 21 in. diam., 1999; “Ocean Edge,” 36 X 15 in. diam., 1992: stoneware by Toshiko Takaezu

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HE CAREER OF CERAMICIST, TOSHIKO TAKAEZU (b.1922) (b.1922) from Pepeekeo, Hawaii, spans the latter half of the 20th century up to the present. She attended the University of Hawaii from 1948-51 and Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1951-54. She taught ceramics from 1954-59 at Cranbrook Academy of Art, University of Wisconsin, Cleveland Institute of Art and Honolulu Academy of Art, and from 1967-92 at Princeton University.

Takaezu received numerous grants and awards including, Tiffany Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts Fellow-

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ship, New Jersey’s Governor’s Award, Living Treasure Award (Honolulu), Gold Medal from the American Crafts Council, NY, Human Treasure Award, University of North Carolina, Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, University of Hawaii, Honorary Doctorates of Fine Art from Moore College of Art, PA, Princeton University, NJ, and Cedar Crest College, PA. Takaezu has had numerous one person shows including the Allentown Art Museum, PA., American Crafts Museum, NY, Arkansas Art Center,AR, Cleveland Institute of Arts, OH, The Contemporary Museum, HI, Cranbrook Academy of Art,

“Anagama,” 25 X 12 in. diam., 1996 stoneware by Toshiko Takaezu

“Plumbego Blue,” 22 X 11 in. diam., 2000 stoneware by Toshiko Takaezu

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Reminiscence by Yuko Nii

TOSHIKO TAKAEZU

While attending Pratt Institute Graduate School (1966-68), I met Steve Zapton, a photographer, and we became good friends. One day in 1978, I received a call from Steve, telling me that Madison University in Virginia, where he was teaching, was going to have a special festival called, “Windows to the East.” The Fine Art Department had chosen Toshiko Takaezu, ceramicist, Isamu Noguchi, the sculptor, and me, as a painter. At that time I did not know Toshiko, but had previously heard from Esteban Vicente that she was a great ceramic artist. So, I was very honored to be chosen to exhibit my work with these two great artists.

However, when Steve called Isamu early in the morning, Isamu answered abruptly, saying, “ I have nothing to do with the university,” and hung up. Steve, being highly disappointed and rather upset, could not exchange further conversation with Isamu. And Isamu was then on his way abroad. After Isamu returned from his long trip, I told him about this particular incident. He said he recalled vaguely that he was a bit impolite and blunt, because he was about to leave for an appointment. I have encountered similar situations with very busy people who, like Isamu, are always in a hurry. Before they hear the story to the end, they make a hasty conclusion which may be opposite to the idea the person was trying to convey. Or, with Isamu’s case, maybe he knew that a University show was not worth while.

When I told him that Toshiko Takaezu was another artist besides myself, he said, “That’s great! Toshiko is my friend, one of the greatest American ceramic artists from Hawaii. You will like her work. Your friend, the curator, Steve, has a good eye.” By then, the fine art show had been planned only for Toshiko’s and my work, and the exhibition took place at the Sawmill Gallery at the university from 3/194/6/79. I could not go to see the show, but I heard from Steve that Toshiko went and it was wonderful.

Soon after the Sawmill Gallery show, I met Toshiko for the first time at Isamu’s when she brought her students from Princeton University, to view Isamu’s work. She mentioned to Isamu that she and I had a show together in Virginia, and that it was a good show. She said to me,“Too bad you could not see it with your own eyes. Your work and mine fit so well together.”

Later in the month, Isamu’s sister, Ailes Spinden, asked me if I would like to visit Toshiko in New Jersey, and I had no hesitation to say, “Yes,” for I wanted to see her actual work and her studio. I always enjoy artist’s studio visits – another way to glimpse and interpret

Yuko Nii and Toshiko Takaezu at the opening reception for the exhibition “Look East” at the Elaine Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, L.I., New York, 7/12/86

the artist’s work in process, and it is like sitting in at a rehearsal before the live stage performance.

In her huge earthy studio and storage areas, numerous stone wares, finished or unfinished, were displayed everywhere. I also saw wheels, tools and a huge kiln. With the massive scale of her work and the firing process, the New York City environment would not have been suitable. Her use of clay and water as materials, products of the earth, and the firing, all belong to nature. Toshiko belongs to earthy nature, mentally, spiritually and physically. She is the “Mother Nature” to whom we all belong.

In January 1980, when she was on the guest faculty at Skidmore College, I was in Saratoga Springs as an artist in residence at Yaddo.

I visited Skidmore to attend her demonstration class, and she gave me a couple of her bowls, a most wonderful personal gift!

In July 1986 (7/12-7/29), we had another show together at Elaine Benson’s gallery in Bridgehampton, Long Island. Her gigantic Luna series work and my outer space imaginative landscapes were a perfect match. Coincidentally we both were heading into outer space!

Left to right: “Mahia - New Moon,” 23 X 22.5 in. diam., 1992, and “White Kahua - Egg,” 30 X 24.5 in. diam., 1994, stoneware by Toshiko Takaezu

smooth, unbroken and rather quiet surfaces of the stoneware, she applies glazes, and creates images with a brush with quick painterly gestures, or dips them, or pours glaze over them. Some have an abstract expressionist feel. On other stoneware she applies the glaze in an oriental calligraphic manner with black glaze on the lighter earth color ceramic. Looking at her work is like observing rushing water, or volcanic ash and lava pouring from beneath the earth into a quiet serene atmosphere. Her colors, glazes, designs and compositions are like paintings in the best sense of “fine art.” In her work, she synthesizes both craft and fine art in both Eastern and Western traditions in the most essential, simple, well balanced and harmonious way – subtle and elegant, yet direct...powerful!

Toshiko bridges craft and fine art. She bridges sculpture and painting, but she remains as a a traditional ceramicist by using a “potter’s” wheel. She combines them all, and “melts” them in fire. Her work is indeed a “melting pot” in the truest sense.

I have been blessed to know this special individual who symbolizes this country’s ideal aspirations as a “melting pot” for people from all nations. .

Each time she had an exhibit I tried to go to see her work, and each time the works were getting larger and more powerful. On the “Li-Mu,” 63 X 26 in. diam.,1993 stoneware by Toshiko Takaezu

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Ansei Uchima

Toshiko Uchima T

HE ARTISTIC JOURNEY OF TOSHIKO UCHIMA (1918-2000), born in Manchuria, China, was more than a half century long. Trained in various media, including drawing, painting and printmaking, she found most suited to her artistic expression the assemblage of objects in collages and box art. The tools of her metier were objects as disparate as antique dolls, postage stamps, seashells, feathers and miniature angelic figures, each with a unique memory and history, arranged into a “poetic theater” which tells the story of times gone by and the impermanence of life while paradoxically living on to remind and charm the viewer.

Uchima spent the first half of her life in Japan and the second half of her life in New York after marrying Ansei Uchima. In

Japan, she was a member of the noted Demokrato art association of the 1950’s and a founding member of the Japan Women’s Print Association. In New York she started her work in the collage medium, which she continued to develop in themes ranging from Gershwin, early Americana, angles, the “Floating World’ and Provence.

Uchima exhibited her work extensively in Japan and New York, most particularly at the Striped House Museum of Art in Tokyo and the Suzuki Gallery in new York. Her work is in collections which include the Art Institute in Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Jane Voorhees Zimmerilli Museum and many museums in Japan, among others, in Tokyo, Kochi, Hiroshima, and Wakayama. g

“In Blue (Dai),” 49.5 X 29 in., 1974 color woodcut by Ansei Uchima

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HE ARTISTIC CAREER OF ANSEI UCHIMA (1921-2000), from Stockton, CA, spanned some thirty years in Japan and New York. Though he produced a significant number of oil paintings and water colors, Uchima’s primary medium was the woodblock print. Employing the techniques of Ukiyo-e masters of a bygone era, he achieved a highly personal twentieth century artistic expression, characterized by lyrical abstractions of natural forms infused with a particular blend of Japanese and Western sensibilities.

Uchima spent the first half of his life in California, where he was born and raised until 1940, and in Japan (1940-59), where he studied and began his artistic career. He spent the second half of his life in New York, where he continued to explore the

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“limitations and possibilities” and “simplicity and complexity” of the woodblock print, and taught printmaking over many years to students at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.

Uchima’s work is part of many collections in the United States and abroad, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the British Museum and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, Japan. Among tributes and honors Uchima received as an artist and a teacher were appointments as emeritus member of the Japan Print Association and emeritus faculty member of Sarah Lawrence College and two Guggenheim Fellowships for creative printmaking. g

“Floating World (Nocturne),” 19.75 X 31.5 in., 1987 collage by Toshiko Uchima

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Reminiscence by Yuko Nii

ANSEI & TOSHIKO UCHIMA I do not remember exactly when I met for the first time the late Ansei and Toshiko Uchima. Perhaps it was at the Nardin Gallery where a friend wanted me to come along to Ansei Uchima’s opening reception. His paintings and wood cuts were being shown.

I was struck especially by his woodcut prints - large scale prints which at first looked like water colors or paintings. If you looked closely, however, you could see wood grains and layers of thin color overlapping, often showing the colors beneath, or some colors subtly blending into the other, creating an airy feeling. The overall images were abstract, but suggesting nature or natural objects.

Some of his woodcut images were like weaving with a warp and weft of bands of bright colors, an organic geometry, rather than hard edged or straight cut. The separate bands of color tilted slightly, creating natural rhythmic movements. And some forms had strikingly straight edges, somewhat like Origami (folding papers) or conic rolls of fabrics, having shading, hinting at three dimensionality, not completely flat. The others were of surrealistic quality with organically round or oblong forms, floating in a mysterious atmosphere, almost like eerie night air, or the purest dark blue of the atmosphere near outer space.

I was told that he was born in California, and went to Tokyo to study architecture, but fell in love with the traditional Japanese art of the woodcut. He mastered the old Japanese woodcut technique,

and subsequently became a master of the contemporary woodcut print.

At the Nardin Gallery I was introduced to the handsome artist and his beautiful wife, Toshiko. Ansei was a quiet and reserved person, at least to me. But besides being elegant, attractive and charming with a smile on her face, Toshiko was quite open and friendly. We immediately became close. I remember especially her healthy laugh, which I liked very much – whole hearted, honest and spontaneous, with no hesitation or inhibition.

In 1982, Toshiko invited me to her one person show at Suzuki Gallery on 57th Street in Manhattan, and I found out that she was quite a unique artist in her own right, specializing in collage and box assemblage. Her use of materials for her work included natural wood, metal, feathers, paper, cloth, and some others, all of which were found objects with faded colors and partially lost textures.

Viewing each of her works was like going through her diary or photograph album, or going to an antique shop, telling stories or journeying into the past. She created her own world which hinted at her romantic, sentimental inner journey. Later, I found that she was really a romantic, sentimental dreamer with a child like spirit, which we do not often find in the world today, especially in “cut & dry” New York City.

In the same year, Ansei suffered a severe stroke, which made him unable to walk or talk normally. In order to restore his health, in 1983, Ansei and Toshiko left for their country house in upper Westchester, NY, and stayed there for ten years. During that time Ansei tried to create despite his difficulties, and Toshiko, while taking care of Ansei, produced numerous works.

In 1986, Ansei and Toshiko had a two person show at the Striped House Museum in Tokyo, which I went to see, since I was in Japan.

Both exhibited many masterpieces of scale and quality, distinctively different from each other, having uniquely independent vision and voice. In some way, seeing their works together was like hearing an ensemble with different instruments, following the same score and ending on the same note. Their married life was an ensemble, starting together and ending together.

After they returned to New York City in 1993, we got to know each other better. Toshiko and I went out together to see some shows, or just to chat, and we called each other often to talk about things each of us did and experienced recently. We talked about books we read or were reading and even about dresses and fashion. When it came to Japanese food, the conversation extended to the point that we both became hungry. We both shared the same taste, and we both missed the same kinds of food. We occasionally exchanged some Japanese food received from Japan. She often talked about birds, flowers, trees, snow scenes, sunsets and the moon and stars, which she observed from her apartment windows. She was a nature lover, having such a special heart full of love and respect. She was a poet. Her poems invited me into the pure world of distilled color, sounds unheard, and scenes I never saw, but imagined that I experienced sometime before my current life began. We were “good friends,” being able to share almost anything which came into our minds.

“Treasure from Homeland,” 15.5 X 20 in., 1991 collage by Toshiko Uchima

Since I found out that they were good friends of Isamu Noguchi and Toshiko Takaezu, we occasionally met each other at openings, or went to see each other’s shows together.

In 1995, when I invited Ansei and Toshiko Uchima, Toshiko Takaezu and Dr. and Mrs. Hirose to my place for dinner (Dr. Hirose had operated on me in 1980, and was Uchima’s family doctor), I told Ansei, “ You and Toshiko are an ideal artist couple, very hard to find nowadays. I’ll bet you never fought.” Ansei was usually finding it hard to express himself with words, for his speech was getting worse, and Toshiko and Ansei Uchima, 1994

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“Into Space,” 19.5 X 30 in., 1971 color woodcut by Ansei Uchima

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“Forest Byobu (Spring Season),” 40 X 50 in., 1982 oil on canvas by Ansei Uchima

it was very difficult to understand him. Then, he said clearly and firmly, “we were too busy to fight or argue!”

she said. But, after the death of Ansei in May 2000, she died several months later in December, from pneumonia.

Since October 1996, I became totally busy with my art center, but Toshiko never forgot to call me to encourage and support me spiritually and even monetarily. I could only comfort her by asking how she and Ansei were doing, not being able to go to help them out.

It must have been an enormous task for Toshiko to attend the bed ridden Ansei around the clock, oversee the domestic fronts, and pursue her creative work, while she was aging. God knows how she did them all, but she never complained. Instead she was always positive, with a kind and warm heart and a sharp lucid mind. Her spiritual, mental and physical strength were unparalleled.Toshiko was an angel. When I told her so, she was a bit surprised, and then she told me she had started working on an angel series, and she could not complete her life until she finished 100 angels.

I never forget her words which came from her uttermost sincere heart, about how thankful she was and had been. She said “No matter what, I leave my fate and life in the hands of God.” God took her life, for God knew He could not let her suffer too long. The tortured life must end.

In 1998, Toshiko and I went to see Toshiko Takaezu’s exhibition at the Hunterdon Museum in New Jersey, and then visited Toshiko Takaezu afterward. This was a beautiful and precious day I shared with Toshiko Uchima, because she was totally occupied with the care of Ansei who was very ill, and her own pursuit of her creative work, whenever she found time. As for me, the WAH Center kept me busy. Going away to the country and forgetting about our daily activities, we felt like thirsty birds finding an oasis. It was an unforgettable, delicious memory which will stay with me for years to come. It turned out that this was the last time we went out together.

Toshiko found out that she had lung cancer, but she was doing O.K.,

When Mark Cohen, an art critic, writer and the essayist for this catalog and I visited their apartment this March to pick up their works for my “Friends & Mentors” show, I saw their life time production of over 1000 works. Yes, Ansei was right. They were too busy creating, no time to fight. Argument only results in exhaustion, mentally, physically and spiritually, to no good end. On the other hand, creative activities give you energy for further development, resulting in a tangible body of work. That is what Ansei and Toshiko did, and their life long accomplishments are a testimony to their shared creative life.

I surely miss the beautiful melody of their ensemble, but it continues to echo in my heart with the quiet pause of Ansei and the hearty laugh of Toshiko. .

“Festival di Avigon,” 18 X 15.5 in., 1979 box-assemblage by Toshiko Uchima

“Forest Byobu (Autumn),” 36.75 X 60 in., 1977 oil on canvas by Ansei Uchima

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“Composition in Album,” 19.5 X 32 in., 1982 box assemblage by Toshiko Uchima

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Esteban Vicente

“Untitled,” 40 X 52 in., 1996 oil on canvas by Esteban Vicente “Untitled,” 22 X 30 in., 1975 collage with pastel and charcoal by Esteban Vicente

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STEBAN VICENTE was born in the province of Segovia, Spain in 1903. In 1921 he enrolled in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, stimulated by the traditions of the Masters, especially Velasquez, El Greco and Goya. Vicente was lured to Paris in 1927, inspired and challenged by the excitement of the city’s modern artistic activity.

In 1936 he moved to new York city, directed solely to the personal pursuit of painting, supporting himself when necessary by teaching. Involved in the climate, physicality and passion of the 1950’s, Vicente’s work established him as an integral part of the New York School. The energy of the 1950’s through the 1990’s expresses itself in the quality and focus of his painting, collage, drawing and sculpture.

Vicente has taught at the University of Puerto Rico, the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, Yale University, Columbia University, New York University, Queens College, Black Mountain College and as a Founding member of The New York Studio School and Drawing, Painting and Sculpture

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since 1964. He was a painting critic both at The New York Studio School and Parsons School of Design. He has been artist-in-residence at the Honolulu Academy of Art in Hawaii, Des Moines Art Center in Iowa, Boston University, Cranbrook Academy of Fine Arts, and Princeton University. He has been awarded fellowships by the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, the National Academy of Design in New York, and two by the Ford Foundation. In 1977 he was elected a member of the Century Association and in 1986 awarded the title of National Academician by the National Academy of Design in New York.

Parsons School of Design and Long Island University, Southampton College have both bestowed Honorary Doctorate of Arts degrees upon him. In 1984 he was invited to participate in the 67th American Assembly at Arden House, Harriman Campus, Columbia University: “The Arts and Public Policy in the United States.”

Vicente has received numerous prestigious awards and honors, such as, the Saltus Gold Medal in the 160th Annual Exhibition

of the National Academy of Design (1985), award from the American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters(1985), the Gold Medal for the Fine Arts, the highest and most prestigious Spanish prize, from the Spanish Council of Ministers for artists who have achieved international stature in the fine arts (1991), elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1993), recognized by Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY, for his Lifetime Achievements in The Arts (1993). monograph, written by Pulitzer Prize Winner, Elizabeth Frank, published by the Hudson Hills Press (1995). He had a major retrospective at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain, later traveling to Santiago de Compostela (Auditorio de Galicia), Valladolid (Museo de la Pasion and Monasterio de Nuestra Senora del Prado) and Palma de Mallorca (Fundacion Pilar i Joan Miro and Casal Solleric), all in 1998. He received the Premio Castilia-Leon de las Artes. and the Spanish Government honored him with a new museum in Segovia, the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Esteban Vicente (1998). In 1999 both

he and his wife Harriet were awarded the Gran Cruz de la Orden Civil de Alfonso X el Sabio for their contributions to Art, and Vicente received the Segovian “Man of the Year Award,” and “El Premio Arcale” from the city of Salamanca. In 2000 Reviewny.com magazine dedicated it’s July Lifetime Achievement Award to him.

Esteban Vicente’s works are represented in major museums throughout the world. He died in January 10th, 2001 in New York City at age 98. g

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orists. He knew how to make colors work. For him, a single color alone was not beautiful color. It is only beautiful in relation to other colors.

Reminiscence by Yuko Nii

ESTEBAN VICENTE

Whenever I think about how I met Esteban, I chuckle a bit. It was July 5th, 1977. I had a show at Elaine Benson’s gallery in Bridgehampton, Long Island. Crowds of people attended the opening reception for eight different artists.

Each artist had been given his or her own separate gallery. I was given a fairly large gallery where several of my large scale “stone paintings” were displayed. Since it was my first show in the Hamptons, I did not know anyone to invite to my opening from the Hampton area. Just a few friends came from New York City. As it was the beginning of the summer season, especially the July 4th Independence Day weekend, everyone seemed to be in a Elaine de Kooning, Esteban Vicente, and Yuko Nii at Vicente’s one person show at Gruenbaum light hearted, joyous and cheerful mood. The Gallery, New York City, October 1982 atmosphere was rather relaxed and down to earth... quite different from New York City openings. to get to know him and become his friend. I was quite shocked to While I was standing in my own gallery, many people came to talk find that I was talking face to face to the renowned Spanish painter, to me in a quite friendly way, or ask about my paintings. One of Mr. Esteban Vicente, whose works I had seen and admired in gallerthem was an elder gentleman with a glass of wine in his hand. He ies in New York City. Now this was the man who gave me such woncame over to tell me that he would like to meet and talk to Mr. Nii derful comments on my paintings!! I thanked him, and said, “I hope about his paintings. Evidently, he did not know that my first name I will see you again.”

“Yuko” was a female name. As I became very curious about this sharp eyed gentleman with a foreign accent. So I guilelessly said, About ten minutes later he came back to ask me if I had some “What would you like to talk to him about?” He said, “This painter engagement after the reception. I said I was planning to go back to had to be an oriental, creating a serene, peaceful atmosphere by Brooklyn. He asked me if I would like to join him to go to a friend’s positioning the stones in such a way as if they are starting to move. party. I accepted his kind invitation. First, he took me to his beauIt is a curious mixture of stillness and movement, but so subtle, yet tiful Dutch Colonial farmhouse where I was introduced to Harriet, dynamic. I like his paintings very much. He must also be a stone his wife, and then we went to his friend’s party. I forget the name sculptor. Since you are an Oriental, is this painter a friend of yours?” of the party’s host, but I was introduced to numerous artists whose So, I told him that this person you have been speaking to is the names were so familiar in the art world. Such an eventful, unforgetpainter, Yuko Nii! His eyes became wider with great surprise. “You table day! This was the opening of a door to a new world of the are such a small lady who painted these powerful stone paintings Hampton’s artists community. just incredible and remarkable!!” he said.

I visited Esteban and Harriet frequently to view his fathomless, I told him I was Japanese. He became charmingly delightful. He beautifully moving paintings in his studio. He was very kind to mentioned the name Toshiko Takaezu, a great ceramic artist with accept me at any time, even while working on his paintings. To me, whom he had a friendship for many years, ever since he had met her his works were spiritual meditations. He said that he did not have to at Princeton University where Toshiko was also teaching. He said, go to Yoga or temple to mediate – painting itself was a meditation.

“You should meet her, she is a great artist.” And he also told me that His paintings transported me through many layers of infinite depth he had known the great sculptor, Isamu Noguchi for many years, where one loses a sense of time and space. It took me a while to and that to him, Noguchi was one of the most respected artists come back to reality after contemplating their mysteries. The mystoday, and that his admiration for him was eternal. I told him that I tery he created in his work was a mystery he could not share with also felt the same way about Mr. Noguchi, and that I was fortunate anyone. I only felt it in my heart. Esteban was one of the best col-

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becomes his or her inner truth. I sense, looking at his work, that he created multiple layers of infinite depth, a reflection of his inner spirit. I will sorely miss Esteban and his kind wisdom. .

It was so kind and generous of Esteban and Harriet to invite me to stay often at their guest house away from their main house where I could see the vast fields with no human beings or houses. Such peace and contentment! Their garden during the summer was full of colorful flowers – like an English garden, somewhat wild, not like the Japanese or French or Italian gardens with order or symmetry.

Going to the Hamptons and getting away from my studio for a few days became my life style for many years.

The 1970’s art world in New York City and Long Island was quite special, very active and energetic, authentic and unpretentious, with so many art openings and happenings. The people I knew were genuinely generous, big hearted, and open minded with a healthy attitude. There was very little competitive feeling among artists. They were willing to help their friends, and introduce them to some galleries, or important people. They did this for the value of human relationships, and not just for the sake of selling art. I enjoyed this period very much, not only in the fine art world, but also in the performing art world where my strong interest was also inclined. In the performing arts, I was involved with stage set and costume design for dance and theater companies which gave me more opportunity to interact among dancers, actors and musicians. I learned of different creative attitudes and energies.

“Untitled,” 50 X 42 in., 1996 oil on canvas by Esteban Vicente

In 1980, with the recommendations of Esteban and Carriet Vicente, and Isamu Noguchi, I was invited to the artist’s retreat, “Yaddo” in Saratoga Springs, New York for two months, and again in 1982. At Yaddo, I could focus on painting and not think about daily routines such as shopping, cooking, telephoning, etc. It was a monk’s solitary life away from the hectic city, to be able to contemplate and concentrate only on one’s work. It was so heavenly!

Through his long life experience (98 years) Esteban knew that one must consistently and persistently pursue the field he or she has chosen with the firm knowledge and wisdom of creative life. To me, Esteban stands out among the many artists as one of the truest artists in the highest sense of the term “artist.” He was one who taught you from his work and from his words,“what art is, what an artist is.”

When we spoke together about ideas, even if we spoke about the same thing, he always asserted himself boldly, clearly and precisely to say what he wanted to express with his own words. Because of his up front directness and idiosyncratic character, his manner sometimes seemed argumentative, unbendable and uncompromising to some people.

According to Esteban, art is something like philosophy, a searching for Truth, but not through reason or logic, rather through intuition.

The artist is something like an intuitive organic “mind machine” extending out of the vast subconscious, searching for something which makes sense to him or to her. And what he or she finds

“Marvell-Hawaii,” 52 X 40 in., 1969 collage on paper by Esteban Vicente

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Yuko Nii Y

UKO NII (b. 1942) Yuko Nii (b. 1942) from Tokyo, Japan, studied (1961-63) English and American literature at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo. In 1963 she transferred to Macalaster College, St. Paul, MN, and earned a B.F.A. in 1965, and a M.F.A. in painting from Pratt Institute Graduate School, Brooklyn, NY, in 1968 (Fellowship student). From 1968 -76, while pursuing her painting career, she taught art at Lenox School (high school level) in New York City. From 1976 to 1996, she pursued her career as a painter by supporting herself as a printmaker and graphic designer, stage set, costume and fashion designer. She also pursued poetry, fiction & philosophy.

Nii’s work has been shown at numerous museums, galleries and universities in the U.S.A. and Japan, including one person shows at The Berkshire Museum, MA, Monique Knowlton Gallery and Haber Theodore Gallery (both in New York City), Vered International Gallery and Elaine Benson Gallery (both in Long Island, NY), Fairleigh Dickenson University, NJ, The International Monetary Fund, Wash., DC, Ginza Kaiga-kan, Tokyo, etc., and many group shows such as The Alternative Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, The Bronx Museum, The Hudson River Museum, The Parish Museum, The Guild Hall Museum, Kent State University, James Madison University, VA, California State University, The World Trade Center, Lincoln Center, The United Nations General Assembly Building, etc.

Yuko Nii in front of one of her paintings, 1979

Nii’s works are in public and private collections including, The Cincinnati Art Museum, The Berkshire Museum, The Alternative Museum, Equitable Assurance Collection, Chase Manhattan Bank, Bankers Trust, Security Pacific Bank, N.L. Industries, The U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers, Bonny Corp., Nihon Davis Standard Corp., etc.

Nii’s works are in a number of poblications, including LOOKING AT LANDSCAPES published by Criterion Press, and she has had many reviews including, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Village Voice, Soho Weekly News, The Berkshire Eagle, Art News Magazine, The Geijutsu Shincho Art Magazine and three major Japanese newspapers, and many local newspapers. She has appeared on several television & radio programs in the USA and Japan.

Nii was an advisory panelist for the Cultural Council Foundation of New York City for CAPS grants, and she was twice an artist in residence at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY.

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“Flux,” 59 X 71 in., 1974 oil on linen by Yuko Nii, collection of Dr. Charles Brush

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Nii founded the non-profit, Williamsburg Art & Historical Center (WAH Center), in 1996 based upon her “Bridge Concept,” a multifaceted, multicultural art center whose mission is to coalesce the diverse artistic community, and create a bridge between local, national and international artists, emerging as well as established of all disciplines. She also wanted to preserve the WAH Center’s building, the Kings County Savings Bank Building, on the National Register of Historic Places and a New York City landmark, and make it a functional part of the cultural community of Williamsburg, one of the largest art communities in the world.

During the first five years the WAH Center has pursued what Chris Gray of The New York Times called a “furious schedule,” producing nearly 70 fine art exhibitions incorporating over 1700 artists. Twice a year the Center produces interna-

“The Dark Region of Spectrum Planet,” 60 X 84 in., 1995 oil on linen by Yuko Nii

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tional shows (fine art and performance) which bridge other nations’ arts and cultures. Additionally the Center has created an art club, “Williamsburg Salon,” a dance festival, a film festival, the Williamsburg Arts & Culture Festival (WAC Festival) incorporating galleries, businesses, open studios and an historical tour, an ongoing music series, theatrical productions, poetry and staged readings, fashion shows, symposia and lectures.

Nii was named one of Brooklyn’s “Women of the year” by Borough President Howard Golden in 1998, and was named a “Woman of Excellence, Vision & Courage” by New York State Governor George Pataki in 2001. g

credits Many thanks to the following for their generous support in the past five years Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden NYC Councilman Ken Fisher NYC Department of Cultural Affairs New York City Landmark Commission New York Landmark Conservancy Brooklyn Arts Council Brooklyn Historical Society Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburg Fifth Floor Foundation Milton & Sally Avery Foundation Peco Foundation

Board of Directors Ken Noland, Honorary Chairman Yuko Nii, Founder Terrance Lindall, President Robin Radin, Vice President & Counsel Deborah Kinzer, Vice President Architectural Committee Craig Morrison, Chairman Shoji Sadao Professor Brent Porter Barbara Skarbinski Advisory Committee

Republic National Bank (HSBC)

Barbara Radin

Tamarack Foundation

Jay Weinstein

Special Thanks to Governor George Pataki And many artists, staff, volunteers, individual donors and community businesses people This exhibit is also made possible thanks to the kindness and generosity of:

Guide and Lecturer for the Williamsburg Historical Walking Tour John Dereszewski Staff Yuko Nii, Artistic Director

Jack Lenor Larsen, Crystal Cooper and Miry Park of Cowtan and Tout • Larsen Design Studio

Terrance Lindall, Executive Director

Jerry Rudquist

Adam Oranchak, Director, Art Through Technology Department

Shoji Sadao, Executive Director; Amy Hau and Kimberly Dorazewski; all of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation Toshiko Takaezu and the Charles Cowles Gallery

Orin Buck, Web Site Director and Graphic Designer

Ari Taub, Director, Film Department

Anju and Yoko Uchima

Carol Quint, Director, Williamsburg Arts & Culture Festival (WAC Festival)

Harriet Vicente, Ellen Russoto, (Esteban Vicente’s Archivist), and the Ameringer Howard Gallery

Whitney Kalke and Mary Westring, Coordinators, Open Studio Tours

Great Appreciation to: Mark Daniel Cohen for the essay for this catalog Orin Buck for the catalog design Jay Weinstein for editing

WAH Center and WAC Festival logos designed by Richard Humann