Everybody in camp,
fezv with form al
training, was making
art or craft, much o f it
amazing.
Right: A doll carved
by Tani Furuhata in
Topaz, ut.
Left: An unidentified
artist in Gila River, az,
crocheted a purse for
herself, adding a handle,
carved from a crate slat
and painted with a pasto-
ral scene.
fide artist, but he was a gardener for a living. W hen I
saw the teapot I thought: T h ere’s something bigger here
that I haven’t thought about.
Full awareness o f the impact the book w ould have
and the vastness o f this subject, o f course, didn’t hit
until after the book was published.
What sort of impact has it had?
In the past when people w rote about the camps, it
was all about the imprisonment; they w rote about peo-
ple as victim s. T h ey w eren’t w riting about the “ soft
new s,” about w hat came out o f the camps. W h at
The
A r t o f Gom an
did, and I think the reason it has had such
an impact, especially w ithin the Japanese-American
com m unity, was that it showed the resilience these peo-
ple had and the dignity w ith w hich they conducted
themselves. It recognizes the internees as people w ith
personalities, w ith skills, w ith hope.
This isn’t the w ork o f just a handful o f talented art-
ists—everybody in camp was doing some form o f art or
craft. Y o u expect that people w ho have artistic skills
are going to try to practice their art, but the objects in
the book are largely by people w ho w ere not form ally
trained. T h ey made amazing things.
Below: Homei Iseyama,
a self-taught artist
who had worked as a
gardener before camp,
carved stone teapots
in Topaz, ut.
And this came as something of a surprise.
N ever in m y w ildest imagination did I think there
w ould be the variety that there w as—or the quality.
I knew there w ere some already famous artists w ho
w ere in camp, such as the sculptor Isamu N oguchi.
I also knew there w ere people in the camps w ho later
became famous artists, including sculptor Ruth
A saw a,
Scooby-Doo
creator
Iw ao Takam oto, and
w oodw orker G eorge
Nakashima. W h at I
w asn’t prepared for was
the average person and
w hat they created.
A nd that they created
these objects out o f found
materials, out o f scrap.
Oftentim es they had to
forge their ow n tools.
W h en people first w ent
into camp, they couldn’t
take any metal objects, so they
w ould sharpen butter knives and
melt dow n scrap metal to hammer
out tools. T h ey w ould crush glass and glue it
onto paper to make sandpaper.
050 American craft dec/jan 11
