<Begin Segment 12>

AI: Well, elementary school years, you were also drawing, then. You were already creating some of your own --

RS: Right. I was, I was drawing a lot and I remember getting a lot of positive reinforcement. That was one thing that I felt I could do better, that separated me from everybody else in class. And not that that was necessarily important, but I think when that happens you tend to respond to it. And I remember in first grade, Mrs. Hines, was her name, and I remember her name simply because she used to reinforce me more than anybody. She used to brag about my drawings and show other teachers, and really made me feel like I was special. And, and I always remembered that. There was sort of a competition between this Chinese guy, Gordon Chin, and I. And Gordon used to tell me, "I could draw better than you." And I remember there was always this competitive thing between the two of us. And one day I was drawing a horse, because that was the assignment, and I was having trouble drawing the hooves, because the hooves are very tricky things to draw on horses. And Gordon took my drawing and he drew them for me. And the teacher picked my drawing out and put it up on the wall, and again praised me for this wonderful drawing. And I remember feeling so guilty because Gordon drew the hooves. And Gordon, I remember, to this day I can see the look on Gordon's face as he sat there looking at me, like, well, are you gonna 'fess up or not? And I never did say anything. And he never let me forget that. And so I carry a certain amount of guilt about that, to this day.

But I remember other drawings, and the reason I remember them is because one day in the... it must've been thirty-five or forty years later, I found these manila envelopes at my mom and dad's house. And they were filled with all the drawings that I did from the first through sixth grade. And my grandmother had kept them. And so my mother presented them to me and said, "Take a look at these. You might be interested." And I pulled them all out, and sure as heck they were all the drawings I did from the first through the sixth grade. And the ones that I found to be the most interesting were all of the ones that I drew of my family, because every time I drew my mother I drew her with blond hair and blue eyes. And it was just astonishing. I never realized it. All these years, here's my father, my sister, myself, and there's my, who's this blond? And that was my mom. And I'm sure I did that because for every good intention, it was, I wanted her to be the ideal mother, and that's what it took to be ideal at the time was to have blond hair and blue eyes. And it suddenly made me kind of reevaluate the artwork that I was doing at the time that had depictions of blond women, mostly, Andy Warhol's silkscreen print that he did of Marilyn Monroe, that I treated as an American icon. And, of course I knew what I was doing at that point, and I was making this selection for obvious reasons as a commentary or condemnation of certain tastes that were driven into my head, but never realizing that that went on as early as the first grade. But what was even more interesting was that the third grade drawings were of myself with blond hair. So, after a few years I didn't settle for just my mom but I wanted to make, idealize myself, too, by giving myself blond hair and blue eyes.

AI: Wow.

RS: So, it was a very interesting and telling set of drawings. And I actually incorporate that in my lecture now, and actually show a slide of those drawings.

AI: Wow. What a, what a discovery. What a revelation.

RS: Right, right.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.