Tom Nakashima

Website:

https://tomnakashima.art/

Biography:

Tom Nakashima has work in over 60 public collections which include the Smithsonian American Art Museum where his painting, Sanctuary with Western Sunset is view. Others are the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Mint Museum, the Long Beach Museum of Art and the Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg Russia. Nakashima is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Fellowship, Awards in The Visual Arts 11, thre- time recipient of a DC Commission on the Arts Award; The Mayor's Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline, DC; two Mid Atlantic Visual Arts NEA Fellowships; three Individual Artist Fellowships, Virginia Commission for the Arts; and an NEA National Printmaking Fellowship for Rutgers Center for Innovative Printmaking. Exhibitions include The Shah Alam International Art Biennale, Malaysia; The Nippon Gallery, Japanese Chamber of Commerce, NYC; the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, CA. Selected solo exhibits include The Washington Project for the Arts, multiple solos at Anton Gallery, DC, Henri Gallery, DC; and Bernice Steinbaum Gallery NYC; Sherry Leedy, Kansas City, MO; The Yamanashi Museum of Art, Kofu, Japan; and The Japanese Embassy, Washington, DC. Tom Nakashima received his MFA from Notre Dame. He is Emeritus Professor at The Catholic University of America and Morris Eminent Scholar Emeritus at Augusta University. Nakashima was born in Seattle and lives near Floyd, VA.  

Artist Statement:

I was born to a Nisei father and Canadian mother of Irish and German Jewish ancestry and grew up in Dubuque, Iowa. Because my father was a surgeon and drafted into the US Medical Corps just before WWII, my immediate family was sent to a US Army base, Camp Chaffee, Arkansas where my father was stationed. My extended family went to the Minidoka or Tule Lake American Concentration Camps. Even though I am of mixed ancestry, I have always considered myself ethnically Japanese. People see me as Japanese and when I glance into a mirror, I also see someone who looks quite Japanese.  

During childhood and into adulthood, I had little contact with Asians with the exception of my relatives on the West Coast and my Uncle George Nakashima and his family, who we visited each summer in New Hope, PA. It was during these visits that I formed artistic concepts embracing both eastern and western thought, derived from the furniture, architecture and art within George’s modern architectural compound. My childhood conception of self, in terms of being Japanese was drawn almost entirely from this environment, as my relatives were the only Japanese people I knew. It was not until 1988, when I traveled in Japan for three months, that I could see Japanese culture through the eyes of an insider.  

As I worked on Tule Lake; Martyr for Ted Nakashima for this exhibition, I have come to realize that many of my iconic images used throughout my work are related to my extended family’s incarceration. The sanctuary image is obviously related to exile and Executive Order 9066 - exile from sanctuary. Conversely, at this point in time it may relate to Hispanic sanctuary or lack thereof at our Southern border. The wigwam is a beautiful and functional structure that can be seen as protection (shelter) but also it can be a kind of cage. The tree is a natural life-giving natural thing but it is often controlled by man and contained in an orchard.