Wednesday, February 13, 2013

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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Executive Order 9066, Series 13.  Tule Lake
  Mixed media with collage, 20"x18" 
 
Series 13 is a painting of the notorious Tule Lake stockade.  I have participated in two of the Tule Lake Pilgrimages.  They have been one of the best organized, drawing over 400 participants, with interesting programs and breakout sessions, starting early in the morning and late into the night.  My painting captures the injustice and harshness the incarcerees suffered during their imprisonment.  The story of Tule Lake is complex.



                                             Executive Order 9055, Series 14.  Minidoka
Mixed Media with collage, 18" x 24"
 
Minidoka is a painting of how I remembered the site after my participation in the 2010 Pilgrimage.  The foreground shows railroad ties, behind that, the sentry post, then the rock garden, barracks and lastly, the canal.



                                   Executive Order 9066, Series 15.  Minidoka Rock Garden
                                                 Mixed media with collage, 18" x 24"

The rock garden at Minidoka is a stolid place with huge rocks placed strategically that poetically projects feelings of solidarity, strength, and peace.



                                                  Executive Order 9066, Series 16.  Topaz
                                                     Mixed media with collage, 14" x 18"
 
Topaz is a place of special meaning for me.  We went to visit it on our way driving home from Minidoka.  To our good fortune, when we went to the Topaz visitor center, we met Jane Beckwith, who is guiding Topaz in its struggle to become a historic site.  She took us out to the original camp ground, which we would have never found on our own.  No barracks, no guard towers, but acres and acres of desolate dry land with remnants of the past strewn all over.  My collage shows, symbolically, the nails, rock garden relics, barbed wire, appliance and furniture parts and the cracked, parched soil.  As I looked at the landscape, I felt the presence of the dark past in unbearable heat.


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