<Begin Segment 62>

AI: Well, we're, I hate to skip ahead too fast, but I also want to make sure that we have time to really talk in-depth about "An American Diary." Maybe we can start by just, if you could tell how, the very beginnings of your idea for, for this diary series.

RS: Uh-huh.

AI: And how the whole project started developing.

RS: Yeah, it actually came about when the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund was announced as having this money available for educational projects. And I really debated whether or not I wanted to do a series of paintings that I would not normally do. Because I sort of felt that, what I was somewhat interested in doing was revisiting the diary series again, those twenty-five paintings. What I wasn't sure was whether or not I wanted to re-visit them and do these very straightforward paintings that were basically illustrative of the diary entry. But for some reason or another, I think what I really felt was it was such a long-shot to get the grant. And so I thought well, why not? I'll just let -- if I get the grant I'll sort of use that as a message that I should do this. If I don't, I wasn't meant to. And so, I applied for the grant and of course to get the grant they asked you to submit letters of support of what you wanted to do. And I felt like I had some advantage being out in Kansas as to any other artist that might apply for something similar because I felt like I was, I'm probably more connected to the country than the average JA artist in Japan -- or in California. And so, what I did was, I said I would have this show, I would do this show, thirty paintings based on Grandma's diaries and I would travel it to five venues on a national level, and one of them would be in California, but one would be in New York, one would be in the Midwest, one in the deep South and one in the Pacific Northwest, and I was pretty sure I could get that. And I got people from those regions to write letters saying, "Yes." And I went right to the Japanese American National Museum and I nailed Karen Higa before anybody else could, I think, to have her write a letter of support, which she did. And I had the Boise Art Museum write one and the Indianapolis Art Museum and my dealer in New York City and Mississippi Art Museum and, so...

AI: You know, I wanted to ask you, you mentioned, you started talking about this, but the fact that this particular educational fund was, came from money from the redress legislation, from that law, and it was very clearly for educational purposes, what happened for you to make, so that you decided that yes, you did want to go ahead with quite a large series of paintings that would be explicitly educational? How...

RS: Well, the whole program was for me to go to each one of these venues and show the series and to lecture about them, and that I would print up a catalog that would explain in very dry terms what happened with the redress -- not with the redress, but the evacuation -- and that I would talk about my grandmother and her diaries and then show some examples of the work. So it wasn't just the exhibition, it was augmented by these other things as well.

AI: And this was all part of your proposal that you put together?

RS: It was all part of the proposal, right. And then what I asked for was money to fund the shipping, the crating, the shipping, the building of the plaques for each painting. There was nothing in it for me to do the paintings. And then I asked for expenses, plane fare for me to fly to every one of these places to give a talk and room and board. But I used a honorarium for, as in-kind, I volunteered that, and of course, in-kind to do the work, the whole series. And I had enough grant savvy to know how to put this thing together, and sent it in and they funded it for $25,000 or something, which is one of the -- pretty good size. And, but at that point, as I was contacting these various venues, I started getting calls from other venues saying, "Hey, we heard about this and if this is free, I'll take it." And so I started adding places, gradually, and of course it went, ended going up to twelve. And the one snag was the Smithsonian. They definitely, Franklin Odo, definitely wanted it and, but because it was a government they couldn't give me a rubber stamp. It had to go through all these levels of approval. And I was trying to work out this schedule where it would start and go around the country to minimize the shipping expenses. And finally, when I couldn't get an okay from them I wrote them out. I left 'em out. And so, I completed the whole tour, actually with ten places at the time. And then began with the process of organizing building crates, doing the work and all this kind of stuff. And then finally, they called up and says, "Okay, we got approval." And I said, "Well you got approval," but I said, "If you want to join in now, you're gonna have to pay the expense of shipping, and you're gonna have to pay it from the Japanese American National Museum to the Smithsonian, and back to the Phoenix Art Museum." There's a little gap. And so, go back to the office and decide whether to -- and they agreed to do that, finally. And then at the very end the Chicago Cultural Center came in and said they wanted to be a part. And I had a little gap that fit perfectly with this loop, and so they were able to take it. So that filled it out to twelve people and then the only other change was, it was gonna end up at Boise, because that was the closest place to Minidoka, but the Bellevue Art Museum wasn't done yet, and so we had to make a switch and let Bellevue be last.

MT: Can you talk about the content, the actual images and how they definitely were a departure from your other style compositions?

RS: Yeah, the paintings themselves were very straightforward, done in comic book style, and that's actually why I chose a larger format so that they would have a clear reference to -- what I wanted were like visual bites, snippets, sort of like little memories that sort of came in just like that on a very small scale. And that was the whole reason for choosing that format. And with the exception of a couple of paintings that, that had references in some of the older paintings, such as the Dick Tracy fingerprint, looking at the fingerprints of Grandma, and the Superman representing America giving back, allowing the JAs to take out money out of their bank accounts to buy groceries. That particular painting had a reference to one of the acts of the "Kabuki Plays," where Superman comes in and throws money at my grandma, so she could buy groceries. I just couldn't resist it in those two spots, to bring in some other issues. And of course, that issue came up in just about -- the show was heavily reviewed. I think it averaged four reviews per show. There were over fifty reviews of the exhibition, when you count magazines as well as newspapers. And, and they all referred to those two paintings, so I'm glad I did it because it just added another dimension to it. And all the reviews were positive. Maybe the best one was Art in America Magazine. I mean, it was a stunning review that went way beyond the content of the exhibition and went into that type of painting. I don't know what caused that response. This guy named Jonathan Goodman, but it was unbelievable. But as I say, the show was really well-covered and to this day it still appears every now and then.

<End Segment 62> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.