Remarkable People: Making a Difference in the Northwest; Interviews with Gerard and Mayumi Tsutakawa, Tape 23

well a few of the children and their three boys and one girl i think it's a failure in your classic family where all wasn't competing to do something we always competed in board games basketball game pong balls that things are a little bit different is that i was always a fun fun component of things happening all time but i think when it came to our careers and and later wife and attention to fly things will cooperate and it's really wonderful because we get together as a family very regularly so we all the birthdays recently a lot of donors together and there's no loss in a second generation and wizened and friends and we all are and cooperated together enjoyed each other's company so some people would find themselves moving in it that you don't have to read into the time stamp than to create this hour in the air feel that it's it is it's kind of a burned and b it's in a

couple well yes and no you know there's there's this image of history especially in seattle it's a small town everybody knows are going to hear in my father's record a mark in the art world here and so we start going down the street and people say older son jerry superpower there's way meehan we rejected the oil you know deans of the sniper that law the truth is out there you know is telling his three rivers yeah so those actually is quite interesting because you know as a joyous event house on assad's dean's brother where they're all going at all or something in and the pressures do you know kind of come up on what we value privacy everybody knows the privacy in certain point especially in the art when you need to get out there and the social event in future work out their own and then go the opening scene and choose like all of which i think is really

it has its pluses but there's also in the downside of not always being out there and me find myself being with her three children and all that i released at home a lot german avoid giving them and the person had relatively low profile the high profile i think in my love would be just got to get out there and do my own artwork enjoy those things madison and most pleasures of historians cultural student christian the us find they add a heart to see here oh no yeah i thought i'd my father was demoted and i think when i started my sculpture and dangerously close was alive built in some ways of a plus and some ways because here you are you have this great artistic backgrounds supposed to be trusted his hopes of creating

sculpture and of its inherent are incidents and scrape offer work comes from the thing about them an identity in your you know your thoughts a little like your father in a sculptor like your father in the page or your voices and what they know i don't want to so earlier i think you know i've been showing and sculpting for about oh fourteen fifteen years on my own and i think i have an identity problem because that in one and billy defied death and so bond and i've become much more colorful i think that i did all my own style and i recognize from iowa or go button on early era when i was a younger artist i felt very much intended and you find your fire when you feel that he has the most exciting league created and where why why creativity

i remember my father coming up with a new sculpture from idea in and the walls sit around and look at it and i think or when moses all that was like regret or that you know let's do this where listed that when my father be raised the reason all this is going to do and i think this looked the best and bound he was always consummate coming up of the new things all the time and i think the thing about it was he would surprise us because there would be a new idea a new sculpture in the fountain and because it was new we may not we may not accept the idea at first and then i think that his creativity was his ability to in the consulate opened new ideas i don't know if it was on if there was if there was pressure to do those americans spontaneously clicking on his early years he was prolific you know the paintings

or aren't in the hundreds and thousands and that and in the last inning that one thing that it raises me about my father's hiv in those first out until he was fifty years old and this is the major part of his career that he's known for summer still call for all of us right fifty up to build a creole these are works in the last thirty years you know sixty or seventy major artworks this is quite remarkable so his earlier years he was taking in high school and he was like prince and houston watercolors oils minister and wood carvings but the last thirty years he's been going to all the cities and on farms so maybe that wasn't the singer's most creative years the last thirty years from fifty to fifty to eighty eighty five and so i mean i think what the ministers from a flu that i really really somewhere great worker can do something great to hear from you i'm here in and as you know well can i do with most vividly remember

that cause a lot of them so as an option my father that and i think the i think the family thinks released at the moment we can't you know we do a show i should be channeled at ten years old in the fifties were going with joe zone they're going to shy sharon is wonderful counting troops and there was always great eating and drinking my father loves to cook loves to eat and it was you know it was not just japanese fruit used to love the red chili and in office this isn't another force you know every all the japanese things very well so i think those great memories of eating and drinking a traveling unit really sticking with juveniles these were kids does he have nothing to receive candid a little bit removed as his mind was also occupied with his heart i

think you know he was a loving father but he was very very busy digit interesting and i am and he was very nurturing in a lot ways and it may not have been your traditional let's go the ballgame or terrible thing but i think he's influenced so many people in as a teacher and as all the kind of inspirational director for a lot of young artists so he was very nurturing after teaching again a risky for what thirty odd years old as dunes come back and say oh you know george was the best teacher in iran and i think that reflects a mini how marcus teachers and a lot of those things but home is their inspirational my way so that misery does he was he was a disciplinary and calm when he had to be that was not a role that he would always imitate i think we're very rowdy gets re we used to raise hell and now it was so i

can say oh well i'm just in the rough a fighter and he's always making trouble in the wintry days after but i think my father was also very rowdy and an end you know in his younger days and it probably got a little bit of a repeated himself or for being able to record some may be held in more tolerance for us i think boys in on three boys when the defoliant have or scrapes in and it has recovered changes you a wimp brothers and sisters faith and maybe not his job as an example is that there is an inconsistency in unions you voted and years and it's then you're looking at it are just said now i am do you do oh boy

the aging yes well it's where all of the baby boomer generation and now we're reaching that kind of midlife crisis or whatever and start to reflect on on mortality and i know a lot of his friends are gone and my father is not you know as young as used to be and it doesn't move around as much so it's hard to do it but you know i had to choose in the twilight of his life at eighty four years old and since skilling of there but i think your twitter questions yeah how are gambling and yeah it is difficult but i didn't really have a happy he's home he's he is he's very sharp he says he likes to read a lot and he's not suffering

in it it's not easy doing interviews and has always been so strong and so it's difficult to see somebody get getting getting or what else you know that he's the same problems that his amazing his hearing well i don't know i think my father might and he is very proud and i think one reason that he he he doesn't go on a lot and as he says like instant social social many families going to the museum and everywhere he goes is very popular so now that he's not having as the years good hearing or saying it doesn't have quite as fast he doesn't want to get out there have friends really one assumes it will consider that the house i love this river in the most sensitive to those

in hearing loss and easy come out and see what you're doing very often he's always come out as my father's always come up in the studio because we always work together and maybe his fountain and i would be the assistant and we would talk about the project so would say what is asked to be done we meet with the engineer and jackie chan would say this estimate the board an awkwardness so and has been critic not only on the indian origin and fabrication and that has been a critic of the art and so when i start doing more smokers i would always asked my father would you think of this and i think i got a lot of wonderful voice is very rich and it is not even say it's ok which has elicited a lot of veterans that are going to happen it's very ambitious and it up as much as he used to and i had i had a martini because i was concerned about the sculpture base to talking all even knows what was going on

and there was just weeks ago or last week there's that i am a little less to say how do you describe your father's clearly stands stands apples typically occur they're beautifully the characteristics of project american subjects in the northwest oh it's a substance that's sasha aaron is finishing your mother jeannette creativity patients are at a time when there was an awful lot of anger and bitterness towards japanese with the environment and how the us handled

prejudices off yeah it you know my father you know was very japanese we came back to this country hugo blick have the chronology of coming back and ninety years old in and then working and in seattle and i think the world of the war happened and i think there was a lot of conflict in and in the minds of the japanese americans and about loyalty to the country and being taken to the camps and losing everything gone but he talks about you know certain incidences of being when traveling around during the war when he was in the army us army inspections salt in pakistan and getting on a train and then there have been asking me you know what are you and having to say i'm i'm chinese because he didn't want it on prosper situation room for traveling

around so sure is very sensitive to all these things tom but i'm wondering i are if i think about my father as being able to rise above that and not be bitter not be confrontational and i am not in on it led in his art he never seek the limelight but it did get kind of evolved around him he was my father he had all these articles and and and things about him and interdependency those things on cutting off the subject and i think in the relations to being just isn't the americans he was and all he was aware of it you know he was concerned about it but it was not the issue he just accepted it as part of life and it affected you younger generation and feeling that

he should have spoken out with regard into being in terminal well you know the whole thing was such a shame that japanese americans that went to camp lost a lot of their dignity and because they were heard so much for the country they love i think they buried it for many many years and my generation is now living through our own consciousness about the history and those things have not come out in their generation right after the war until now unknown that it's come out i think that there there's much more concern about being japanese american and your rights as an american citizen so i think it's affected us but it's like you know the syndrome we're just you know you're waking up again and seeing what has happened i think that ended right after the war my father you know a patrician congress or whomever because he lost all this property and i was completely ignored there was nothing happening and i think in that time nothing good happen but now that you know

people are far more willing to take that long to heal those wounds i think to really come to grips with the issues i think maybe that's what happened to the japanese community it was there were efforts to two on the right those wrongs right after the war but that the country was ready then and the community was really either julie time spent in the process he just certain way and it is arrogant submerged any kind of know bizarre is not very political but i think it is valued the value of his culture and art is is very positive very uplifting are inspirational that he needed one piece then quote the people's innocence war mother announced the bronze casting from a plaster that ended nineteen forty seven right after the war and it shows the mother and child and anguish over the war

and i think he did feel the grief and our allies their artworks were formed much more boston very close to him or easy tagging at home my father has always been taught us to respect nature enjoy and don't do it is very inspirational for his art where my fathers looked at water of course with with where he hid my father's use water because it's such a strong natural talent and roxanne the mountain the trees that are very great northwest i am so i think the northwest has been a very big inspiration to my father for his arm in a nature so you get these

villages across phone lines were talking you know i and i think i'm a little weird when you know something in the country these are used first question velma father image of him as you walk around the sauce as you are rocks and i think that he's always taken that reforms and roxanne england primal form serrano around and didn't administer the square he's always clipped english i should mention that for the dragging on the wealthy sexy with before a snow on the floor and then of course the trees and the cliffs and the mountains and all in very inspirational it's the northwestern it's wonderful what the

year and this was i right our work is somewhat my father's and and respect the been taking a simple geometric shapes and i'm concerned more reform and less with the us find pictures of mormon with simple shapes and forms so i like reading a bold solutions from before the nineteen seventy three fb but look at the uk think that it hasn't been hearing about again for the family was for the weekly article the skyline

and i was so long ago now isaac i can remember the specific components of that i thought the feel of it was pity and i do remember that he can hurt her eyes dean to what the us may have some words yes and now we hear the air dimeo beings in a passing off again and now as i was on healthy as good and then and then for the smithsonian tapes we were around kind of all just incidentally involved you and i had this is a nice room yesterday this is how you say it how to describe him

as he is now let's go into a resilient person that has characteristics and etc oh i think they're that some of the most outstanding characteristics would probably have fallen from the time that he was young until until now we always feel that that he has been very grounded very ethical very fair and generous but also at the same time having this deep reverence for the magical or mystical that that makes a spiritual isn't not so much if the concentration on organized religion but a reverence for the spiritual with that it ended and the knowledge that so many civilizations have and use that and have embellished and can incorporate into their lives and then a real pure sense of the

value of art and in the integrity of people who who pursue our own and i'm quite sure that those things have followed him all through and it's hard just to to look at him now and then know all of the things that he's done that the syrians kind of the things i mean besides the physical strength it and anyone who's a metal sculpture will you know obviously displayed physical strength that stamina and stalin that i think all of those things have been important along with this band great joy and an adherence to family and that's always been very important to all of us why do you say that he found two japanese parents would have listened more japanese than most americans are treating the patients in there

no i don't you know i mean it's kind of interesting because i think that that some people transcend their ethnic characteristics and endicott people of the world are there they're really international people in you know we know people like that and i think that that some of the things that that mark him as japanese would have to do with the lives that he used if you see christie's of the language the deep knowledge about the japanese civilization to history but the literature the arts and things that have been very very important to the japanese people themselves but at the same time i think that some of the characteristics that are traditionally ascribed japanese just informed isn't so is so on eu wouldn't display anything there that he has always been

such an original thinker and an nonconformist thinker and an anti establishment to person that that that in itself would kind of draw him away from certain men characteristics that people traditionally ascribe to japanese but even that deep knowledge of a japanese tradition i think is something that that intentionally or inadvertently house into this work how are you it is but you know and because he is aware of that i think the reason that we think he is spiritual is because he always ahead is head is taught over talked about

the importance of supernatural forces like nature and accepted the gods in the shinto sense of supernatural forces that are tied to nature and as as i said he is not a person who tore he's not a person who preaches apace in organized religion or politics but i think that he is steady of the great civilizations of the world which for the most part were based on spiritual leanings and fundamental thinking that was tied to spirituals and this leads us to believe that he's critical visit you're marvelous it really know you're a writer so that the sonic

youth with the most remember about that it was really a lot of what we went camping and quite sure that my mother who bore the brunt of all of the work of taking the family of six campaign and car trips we were always fighting in the cartoon for children all within two years of each other we're always be carrying hitting each other and so on and then that was right in the midst of it being in in the middle of the second child but earned it i remember him being very vigorous and always wanting to take us to natural spots so many of the trips were to beaches to car speak to deception past two well the canal became our second home because we acquired land in a land cooperated then built that happened there back in the sixties that i'm for me to think of taking a vacation now without being their wires ferry and saltwater in

fact it is this very strange to me so it was there were so countless and fishing trips and especially very simple drop line fishing with weather without uphold that you know a block of poetry that will line and i feel that i was a terrible fisherman i don't know of any of my brothers were really ever as good a fisherman as he was but he's born in the year of the da harvey and you he loves dogs and die and going out on these trips and telling jokes and pines and playing cards and pulling guns out of his bag for a sneeze of the things that it's so really so sad that my children and in the other and grandchildren don't have a sense of how much fun it was when i tell them that he would tell jokes and swearing that the tv because the professional football was stupid they you know didn't quite compute for them

to us from your observation the relationship between my parents has been very collegial i i think that there's no doubt to people that know them that it has been very collaborative and sense my mother taking part in all artistic decisions but not be in a nominal way not not in a way that has her identified as a collaborator in art i think that a lot of people feel that her role has been traditional in the japanese sense but i would say that her role has been one that she has chosen an in the sense of wanting to be supportive and being supportive of all of us sure role is very very central in the sense of providing the network and

be the ongoing continuity and a curve providing history and culture to the children and providing a really keen artistic sense to all that we do fb it's

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