Finding Family Stories Arts Partnership Project Selects Artists For 1998 Exhibitions

The Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles; Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles; and Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Santa Barbara, have announced the selection of six artists participating in the third year of the Finding Family Stories (FFS) Arts Partnership Project, funded in part by the James Irvine Foundation.

Initiated by the Japanese American National Museum in 1995, the goal of Finding Family Stories has been to create a cross-cultural dialogue among the varied communities that shape California. This year’s three concurrent exhibitions will feature work from the Japanese American, Jewish American, and California Indian communities, providing audiences with a diverse perspective on self, family, and community.

This year’s featured artists are Joyce Dallas, Aaron Glass, Eddy Kurushima, Frank LaPena, Judith Lowry, and Kim Yasuda.

“The six artists were collaboratively selected by the three partnering institutions.” explains Claudia Sobral, Co-Manager for Finding Family Stories, with the Japanese American National Museum. “The project team agreed that to explore diversity within each community, it is important to have artists representing different generations, gender, and who work with a variety of media. This dynamic better reflects the different perspectives each artist brings to the subject of family.”

The Finding Family Stories video project, Reflections, will be shown at each site accompanying the artist exhibitions. Produced by L. Frank Manriquez, Stephanie Friedberg, and Thomas Boon Koo, the video is a meditation on issues related to identity, homeland, immigration, and language in the Japanese American, Jewish American, and California Indian communities.

Finding Family Stories exhibits will open at the Japanese American National Museum, January 23, 1998; Skirball Cultural Center, January 29, 1998, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, February 6, 1998.

Former FFS partners have included the Korean American Museum, Watts Towers Arts Center, and Plaza de la Raza.

The Skirball Cultural Center, open to the public since April 1996, was founded to interpret the American Jewish experience, to nurture American Jewish identity, and to strenghten American Society. The Center offers a wide-range of permanent and temporary exhibits; concerts; lectures; performances; readings; symposia; film and video screenings, and educational offerings or adults and children. Location: 2701 North. Sepulveda Boulevard., Los Angeles. For more information call the Museum at 310.440.4500.

For more than 30 years, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History has worked with the Chumash Indian Elders to share the story of the Chumash community. Museum programming also features speakers, dancers and storytelling by other California Indian groups including the Maidu, Cahuilla, Pomo, Tachi-Yokuts, Wintu, and Tolowa. Location: 2559 Puesta del Sol Road, Santa Barbara. For more information call the Museum at 805.682.4711 x348.

The Japanese American National Museum, incorporated in 1985, opened the doors to its historic Phase-I building in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo in May of 1992. The Museum is dedicated to preserving and telling the Japanese American story as an integral part of United States history. The institution serves a national and international audience by offering a variety of educational and public programs, exhibitions, and resource materials. Location: 369 E. First Street in the Little Tokyo district of Los Angeles. For more information call the Museum at 213.625.0414.

Artist Biographies

Joyce Dallal

Dallal’s work ranges in media from painting and collage to installation. Dallal explores the evolution of contemporary American identity, incorporating issues of immigration, assimilation, conflicting loyalties, and changing cultural traditions. Much of her work is based on her own experience as an Iraqui-Jewish American. She received her BFA from UCLA and her MFA from USC, and is on the Art faculty at El Camino College. She is the recipient of a Brody Arts Fellowship and a Western States Arts Federation Fellowship in Photography.

Aaron Glass

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Aaron Glass is currently working and studying in Vancouver, British Columbia. Glass’s artwork combines his interests in art, anthropology, linguistics, and psychology. While Glass has always been keenly aware of both his Jewish heritage and his family ancestry, it has only been in the last few years that this information has become meaningful to him. In his recent mixed media work, he explores various aspects of that history. Particularly in how photographs and family heirlooms reconstruct the lives of our ancestors in our own memory. Glass was selected to participate in the 15th Annual Vancouver Juried Exhibition (Community Arts Council, Vancouver, BC).

Eddy Kurushima

A second generation Japanese American (Nisei), Eddy Kurushima studied at Chouinard Art Institute (California Institute of Arts). One of the 120,000 Japanese Americans relocated to interments camps during World War II, Kurushima’s works reflect his experiences in the Jerome Concentration Camp in Jerome, Arkansas.

Working in oil, acrylic, watercolor, and pencil, his paintings depict stories of daily life in camp and the repercussion of the camp experience in the Japanese American community after World War II. His works have been exhibited throughout Southern California from the Southern California Religious Center at the University of Southern California; East West Players Theater, Kerchoff Art Gallery at the University of California at Los Angeles; Centenary United Methodist Church in Los Angeles; and Loyola Marymount University.

Frank LaPena

Born in San Francisco of Native American and Asian parents, LaPena’s early childhood experiences were of boarding schools and foster homes, away from his Native American traditions, language, and beliefs. LaPena’s ancestors were of the Wintu-Nomtipom tribe, a mountain river people of Northern California. His quest for knowledge about his heritage has become a lifelong journey and is central to his art and his work. Working in many media, LaPena’s pieces represent the myths of his people and have been exhibited worldwide. LaPena is a Professor of Art and Ethnic studies and Director of Native American Studies at California State University, Sacramento. He has dedicated himself to preserving his culture through the oral traditions, ceremonies and philosophies of his people and passing these experiences and traditions on to the next generations.

Judith Lowry

Judith Lowry was born in Washington D.C. and resides in Nevada City. Lowry is of Mountain Maidu and Hamowi Pit-River, California Indian and Australian descent. She draws her artistic inspiration from her experiences growing up in a mixed race family, traveling, and living around the world. Her large scale acrylic paintings are usually figurative and narrative. Lowry considers her work to be a modern extension of the tradition of storytelling which runs in her family. She earned her bachelor’s degree in photography from California State University, Humboldt, and her master’s degree in painting from California State University, Chico. Her work has been widely exhibited in California, winning numerous awards.

Kim Yasuda

History, memory, and loss are pervasive issues in the mixed media work of Santa Barbara-based artist Kim Yasuda. As a woman of mixed Asian descent, her work represents her desire to know and understand the sources of her identity. Her site-specific installations create physical environments which, according to Yasuda, serve as a surrogate space allowing the viewer to pass into and through her, diffusing the borders of identity between the artist and her audience. Currently teaching at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Yasuda’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Ansel Adams Center, Friends of Photography; Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, Newport Harbor Art Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, New York, Camerawork Gallery, London.