Territorial Hues: The Color Print and Washington State, 1920-1960 will consist of prints that display the cultural and stylistic influences used by Washington State artists to produce highly exceptional works that reflect the color, light, and atmosphere that is unique to this region. The book focuses on several mediums including color woodcut, intaglio, serigraphy, and lithography. The influences of Japanese prints and regional appropriations of international movements will be examined as well as the local production of white-line prints.

Territorial Hues: The Color Print and Washington State, 1920-1960

History

Martin, David F.

Americas

Cascadia Art Museum

Invocation of Beauty accompanies the first full-scale exhibition of this important American photographer. Drawing almost exclusively from the family archives, the book includes many images that have been previously unpublished. Soichi Sunami was born in Okayama, Japan in 1885 and immigrated to the United States at the age of twenty and arrived in Seattle in 1907. Initially aspiring to be a painter and sculptor, he studied with local artist Fokko Tadama and became part of the Seattle art community. During this time, he became seriously interested in photography and apprenticed with important local figures such as Wayne Albee and Frank Asakichi Kunishige. He soon found employment in the photography studio of Ella McBride, who became associated with Seattle's Cornish School in its early years. Important modern dancers such as Anna Pavlova and Ted Shawn performed in Seattle and were photographed by the McBride Studio through Nellie Cornish's connections. Many were or became major figures of modern dance. When Sunami moved to New York in 1922, he attended the Art Students League to advance his art training. He met numerous visual artists who posed in his studio and employed him to photograph their works. Retaining his interest in modern dance from his connections in Seattle, Sunami soon began a collaboration with Martha Graham, producing some of the most iconic images of her dance performances. In 1930, Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. asked him to become staff photographer at the new Museum of Modern Art. During the next thirty-eight years he produced more than twenty thousand large-format negatives for the MOMA archive and independently created an important body of work in the field of modern dance photography. The book includes Sunami's rare, early pictorialist images of the Northwest landscape and follows his journey to the east coast where he became internationally recognized for his brilliant studies of dancers and cultural figures of the era.

Invocation of Beauty: The Life and Photography of Soichi Sunami

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

The first study of how gay and lesbian artists influenced and established a regional cultural identity in the first half of the twentieth century, this groundbreaking publication chronicles and contextualizes pioneering gay and lesbian artists from the pre-Stonewall era. Looking back as far as the 1910s, museum curator David F. Martin has unearthed astonishing works by both lesser-known and internationally famous artists. Created primarily from original research drawn from the artists? unpublished archival materials, and produced in conjunction with a previous exhibition at the Cascadia Art Museum, The Lavender Palette consists of three essays as well as individual biographies of thirteen artists. Generously illustrated with artwork and personal photographs, The Lavender Palette sheds light on significant contributions from a marginalized and understudied group. Throughout, Martin aims to amend the formerly pejorative use of the colors lavender and purple in association with homosexuality as signs of weakness and frivolity, and to establish the effect these artists had in defining a regional aesthetic that remains to this day. This publication is distributed for the Cascadia Art Museum.

The Lavender Palette: Gay Culture and the Art of Washington State

Review\n"Kenjiro Nomura... restores him to his place in art history and provides an important lssei artist viewpoint of the wartime incarceration in images."―Densho\n"This dynamic book furthers Johns's important contributions to scholarship on American art history."―Stephen H. Sumida, professor emeritus, University of Washington\n"Johns has brought Kenjiro Nomura out of the shadows, powerfully demonstrating his development as an American artist and his central engagement with midcentury modernism."―Greg Robinson, author of The Unsung Great: Stories of Extraordinary Japanese Americans\nBorn in Japan, acclaimed Seattle artist Kenjiro Nomura (1896–1956) came to the United States as a child of ten, received artistic recognition by age twenty, and in the 1930s became the best-known artist of Japanese descent in the Northwest, his artwork widely exhibited regionally and nationally. Along with more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans from the West Coast, Nomura was incarcerated during the war but continued to paint, leaving a visual record grounded in place and circumstance. In postwar years he developed a new abstract style that brought him recognition once again.\nIn Kenjiro Nomura, American Modernist, Barbara Johns presents Nomura's life and artistic achievement within their historical context. Her account depicts Seattle as a stronghold of prewar Issei artistic activity, and Nomura's work as providing a meaningful contribution to the history of American art. The book is generously illustrated with artwork tracing Nomura's entire career. David F. Martin, curator of the Cascadia Art Museum, expands the context of Nomura's accomplishment with an account of the artists with whom Nomura associated.\nThis publication is distributed for the Cascadia Art Museum.\nBook Description\nThe first in-depth exploration of a prominent Seattle-based Issei artist

Kenjiro Nomura, American Modernist: An Issei Artist's Journey

Johns, Barbara

History & Criticism

One of the leading Northwest artists of his generation, George Tsutakawa (1910–97) is internationally known for his sculpture and fountain designs. However, a lesser-known aspect of his career was the production of blockprints, watercolors, and works on paper that began in the 1920s and continued throughout his career. 
Born in Seattle and educated in Japan, Tsutakawa had early success while still in high school. He attended the University of Washington, where he received an MFA in sculpture in 1950, and became an influential instructor at the university's School of Art from 1947 to 1976. 
Drawn from the Tsutakawa estate, most of the works shown here have never been seen previously by the public. These early works display concepts and inspirations that would inform Tsutakawa's aesthetic throughout a long and distinguished career. Contextual works by Tsutakawa's instructors and contemporaries provides a broader understanding of his oeuvre.\nExhibition dates: Cascadia Art Museum, December 1, 2022–March 26, 2023

George Tsutakawa: Early Works on Paper

This is the first study of the work of Chao-Chen Yang (1909?1969), an important Seattle photographer who gained national prominence in the mid-twentieth century. Born in Hangzhou, China, Yang received his art training at the University of Hsin-Hwa in Shanghai. After graduating, he became art director for the Government Institute of Nanking. In 1933 he moved to Chicago as chancellor of the Chinese Consulate and attended the Art Institute of Chicago. Initially trained as a painter, he later used photography as his main medium for artistic expression. In 1938 Yang was transferred to Seattle as chancellor of the Chinese Consulate and became actively involved with the Seattle Photographic Society. He was also an influential art and photography instructor and worked tirelessly to advance Chinese culture in the United States. Yang won numerous awards in important photography salons and became a Fellow of the Photographic Society of America, the Professional Photographers Association of America, and the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. He was a pioneer in color photography in the Northwest in both advertising and the fine arts. Exhibition dates: Cascadia Art Museum, November 9, 2023?February 11, 2024

Full Light and Perfect Shadow: The Photography of Chao-Chen Yang

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