personalities
Art imitating life
Roger Shimomura, a KU professor of art uses his days spent in a internment camp as inspiration for his art.
James J. Reece Kansas staff writer
n 1942, at the age of 3, Roger Shimomura, a KU professor of art, was confined in an internment camp in Minidoka. Idaho.
Shimomura was one of about 120,000 Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans, placed in internment camps across the United States during World War II.
Photo courtesy of Roger Shimomura
"My first recollections of life are in the camp," said Shimomura. "The recollections are mostly of weather conditions. It was dusty, muggy, hot. It seemed like we were in a desert climate, and there were mountains way off in the distance."
Richard Devinki / KANSAN
The internment of his parents, his grandparents and him in the dry Minidoka camp, and the effects of such interm ents on generations of Japanese Americans, has become one of the primary elements of Shimomura's art.
Shiminura, 53, has taught at KU for 23 years since gaining a master's degree in fine arts in 1969 from Syracuse University. When he's not teaching drawing, painting and performance art classes, he concentrates on his own professional painting career as well as writing, producing and directing performance art pieces.
His professional endeavors include 65 solo exhibitions of his paintings and prints in the U.S., Canada and Japan, as well as performance art presentations throughout the country. Much of his work is aimed at soothing tensions roused by racial injustices such as the World War II interments.
Above: "Self Portrait, 1990" painted by Roger Shimouma in 1991.
Left: Shimouma poses in his office with puppets he uses in his performance pieces.
The internments uprooted entire japanese-American families and placed them in camps. This included forcing them to reduce their amount of personal possessions and to sell all businesses that were not seized by the government. Shimomura addresses the internments in his art because, to his distress, that part of U.S. history 'merited little mention in history books.
"When I went to school, there were about two sentences," Shimomura said. "Now there is about a parachrash."
U. S. icons such as Superman and Santa Claus. The Minidoka Series was displayed twice in Japan, but to his dismay none of the paintings sold there. He said he thought the Japanese wanted no involvement in the interments because they did not feel responsible for them.
Starting in 1978 with his six-painting Minidaokia series, he set out to interpret diary entries made by his grandmother, Toku Shimomura, while incarcerated in the camp. The paintings incorporate traditional Japanese woodcutting styles and costumes with equally traditional
He has also done 24 additional paintings, called the Diary Series, based on the diary Toki kept from 1912 when she was a child and her death in the United States in 1978.
His latest effort in performance art is partially based on Toku's dairy as well as his life and that of his family. Titled "The Last Sansei Story," the three-part performance art piece will give representations of the Issei, the Nisei and the Sansei, or first, second- and third-generation Japanese Americans.
"I had a call from Peter Thompson, now the dean of the School of Fine Arts," said Shimomura recalling the job she worked on for the job here, so he turned him down.
The piece is scheduled for an April performance at Haskell Indian Junior College and shows the struggles each generation faced during immigration to the United States, while incarcerated during the war and with stereotyping that resulted and still exists today.
"later on, he called back," Shimomura said. "I said I would come down just to see what it was like, but I told him that I was not interested in coming to Kansas."
Shimomura was impressed by KU's painting department and accepted the
He said that after graduating from Syracuse, he had blanketed the nation's colleges and universities with job applications and had forgotten many of the schools to which he had applied. But Thompson's persistence eventually paid off.
"It was one of the biggest painting departments I had ever seen and, as it turns out, it's one of the biggest in the country," he said.
Living in Lawrence since 1969, Shimomura said he almost passed up the chance to be a professor at KU.
Sitting at the dining room table of his house and studio at 1019 Delaware St., Shimomura said he had no qualms about living in Lawrence. But his children did not want to attend KU. Instead, they chose to attend colleges in Seattle, where they have lived with their mother since a 1975 divorce.
But Shimomura said the local lack of diversity actually has fueled his creativity.
"They are used to a far more culturally diverse group," Shimomura said of his children's reluctance to come to KU. "They just see KU basically as a white institution."
S ihmomura said his children — a son, 22, and two daughters, 18 and 19 — had grown up in his hometown of Seattle and attended the same high school where he graduated. He had the school, which he had an equal number of ASIAs, Affiliated American whites and also was attended by musicians Jimi Hendrix and Quincy Jones.
"I don't know that I would be working with this much ethically oriented
material if I did not live in Lawrence," he said.
Shimoumara said that his affinity for Japanese culture could be attributed in part to Lawrence. At an Lawrence auction in 1969, a man asked him if, since he was Japanese, he painted geishas.
"That's when I decided I would do a painting like something someone would expect me to do." Shimomura said. "I was not a Japanese national. My parents are 100 percent Japanese and have never been to Japan."
But he found painting through his heritage more difficult than he expected. It led to what he called a mixture of icons paintings like "Dinner Conversation With Nancy," on display at the Spencer Museum of Art, with images of a geisha, Snow White, rice, fish and Kentucky Fried Chicken. His flat style shows his fondness for comic books, and his work contains heroes such as Superman and Dick Tracy.
A cousin of Shimonura's has the same craving to discover his Japanese heritage. Using government scrolls, the
cousin recently traced the family lineage in Japan to the year 800. One family anecdote unearthed is a story of two Samurai brothers who committed a double suicide in the year 1200 when the family home was lost in a battle.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
But as Shimonura sat in his home, he wondered about the fate of the Yonsei, the fourth generation of Japanese Americans, such as his children, who speak Japanese with heavy accents. "The Last Sansel Story" discusses the fate of the Yonsei.
"There's a reference to the fourth generation," Shimomura said. "The idea that by the time you get to the fourth generation, Japanese culture is assimilated."
DECEMBER 8, 1992 PAGE 5
KU Canvans
Behind Shimomura's shoulder sat evidence of the blending of Japanese and U.S. cultures. It was a circa-1950 carousel figurine from Japan. Sprawled in flight, wearing a blue space-heltel and a red cap, the figure seemed to be the Japanese mirror image of Superman.
People and places at the University of Kansas.
Get Noticed this Holiday Season
NEW!!
•5 Tans $15
•7 Tans $20
Travel Club Guaranteed 5-40% Savings
EUROPEAN
TAN HEALTH & MAIR SALON
Southern Hills Center
23rd & 19th
(Behind Arby's)
841-6232
Congratulations to Eisha Pierney recipient of the Panhellenic Association NewMemberLeadershipAward
COMPANY
and to Elizabeth Duran recipient of the Panhellenic Association LeadershipAwardforMinorityWomen
and to
- Casual Wear
- Weekend Wear
- Anywear!
- Anywear!
(Yes, We're now Open!)
939 Mass. 865-1355
15% OFF EVERYTHING!
Buy one Complete Pair of Glasses at the Regular Price. Get 2nd of Equal or Less Value at Half Price.
Holiday Special
Offer Good Until 12-31-92
737 Massachusetts
842-0880
BRADY OPTICAL
Tuesday Night Drink Specials
25¢ Domestic Draws
50¢ Boulevard Draws
Hockenbury Tavern
PIZZA BY THE SLICE!
1016 Massachusetts
865-4055