Reconciliation Park, The Tacoma Art Museum and the  Washington State History Museum.

The second week of class we traveled up to Tacoma as a class to visit a couple museums and see Tacoma’s Reconciliation Park.

Being in my late 30’s, the bus ride to start of the trip was an interesting blast from the past.  Assuming my position in the back of the bus was natural for me, but man those green plastic covered seats felt a lot smaller than I remembered.  I honestly don’t think I’ve gotten that much bigger, but the cramped back seat of the bus definitely made me think about my years riding the shame train to school in the 90’s.  The sun shining through the windows and the murmur of folks chatting sent me back in time.

Washington State History Museum

We piled off the bus into the streets of Tacoma, the air was crisp and the sun was bright.  After a quick walk past the court house, we found the Washington State Museum and started exploring the exhibits.  I love the feel of wandering around the museum, and seeing the journey the people of the world who made Washington the place it is today.  Having lived here most of my adult life, the Asian American History was something I know little of and was excited to see first hand some of the stuff my high school history teachers had left out of our Washington state history classes.

I made my way up to the third floor, where the art of a Japanese American named, Takuichi Fujii was on display.  His collection of simple water colors out of his diary, abstract paintings and a set of wooden carved heads.  Takes you on a vivid trip through his life and blasts you with a realistic vision of what it was like living behind the fences of the concentration camps found here in the 1940’s.  Having visited the Puyallup Fair grounds dozen of times in my life, I had a new appreciation of the horror that place might bring the Japanese Americans people.  The exclusion orders placed on the Japanese in 1942, stripped these humans of any life they had carved out for themselves.  And forced them to live in these places, barely suitable for animals.  And yet, 110,000 people were rounded up and placed in these camps for the “safety of the country”.

Takuichi’s art showed the barracks lifestyle in a beautiful black and white detail, his use of perspective gave me a real feel of the camps.  How life was inside the fences, and how they had to make do with the hand they had been dealt.  I’m amazed at his simple black watercolor sketches and how much detail he was able to capture with limited resources.  From the stark landscapes showing the barracks layouts, the rows of “temporary” homes they made there own.  To the scribbles of the people living their lives in the make shift towns, people doing chores like chopping wood or cooking in the mess halls.  Children playing in groups, making the best of the times under such dire circumstances.

I saw a sketch of a rose he had started in one of his Art Diaries entries, and the detail in the light black watercolor outline captured so much beauty.  Before I could snap a picture, the digital display cycled to the next entry.  I had to stand there and watch the small display screen for quite some time, waiting for it to scroll back through.  This allowed me the chance to see a bunch of entries that really touched me in his diary.  I was lucky enough to have one of our Japanese classmates read off some of the titles as they cycled through the pages, and that was another high point of the trip for me.  Being able to tie Takuichi’s notes into the story in my head that the pictures told me.

I enjoyed seeing his later works too, the oil painting of his daughter, and his more abstract pieces showing his style of a truly awesome artist.  My favorite pieces other than the rose, were the two wooden carvings of him and his wife.  Carved from the tops of wooden fence posts salvaged from a fence in 1943, had so much detail and really showered me with a warm feeling of their spirit.  The way he was able to make such perfect cravings even in their time of little hope, showed me they where still happy in such horrible times.  That having your family and faith that things will get better was enough to keep strong.

After awhile I wandered down stairs through the Native America section, and found a long house to go into and sit down.  Closing my eyes and breathing deep, I let the environment and the sounds of the museum sink in.  The native drums and signing playing in the makeshift long house, took me off to a better place and helped me release of some of the bad vibes I was feeling after learning more hard times our government had placed on other groups inside our Native American boarders. It’s tough for me not to feel guilty in america as a “white guy”, while calling myself an american.  So sitting in the long house meditating and releasing that guilt I feel was a good way to restart my day. Taking with me what I am learning, and not harvesting the resentments of for being born in such a fucked up place.  After a few more deep breaths and being thankful for the knowledge of the past,  I wandered down the stairs gathering my stuff and took off out the door to the next stop.

The Tacoma Art Museum

I’ve been to a bunch of art museums in my life as an artists, and although Tacoma’s is small, it has a great feel.  Maybe it was the canned music playing, which was more current and up beat than other museums I’ve visited or the meditation from the longhouse a few minutes before.  But this place was bright and happy, and I really dug some of the art in here.  From the amazing glass works of local glass sculpture, Dale Chihuly, to some fine art paintings on display from artists around the world.  For an art geek, this place felt like heaven to me.  I wandered around looking at the brushwork up close on traditional “fine art” pieces, taking a few moments to sit and stare into some abstract paints to see if I could connect with the artists visions.

There is a painting of some peaches in a bowl, in one rooms.  Which looked so delicious, I wanted to reach up and grab one taking a huge bite just to see if it was as juicy as the paint made them look.  Now maybe I was just hungry, but this artist knew how to paint some beautifully shaped peaches.

After spending some time looking through the wicked spirals in the Chihuly exhibit.  My mind spiraling through glass worm holes and past bowls of Saturn looking perspectives.  I had the thoughts of being a tiny person running through imaginary worlds of spiky glass plants and huge glass orbs each with a world of their own inside them.

I found a large open room, where a train chugging along could be heard.  I’d found the works of Zin Lin, showing the Chinese’s travels through america building the railroads across america to the battles in the streets of Tacoma.  Large abstract works lined two of the walls, which showed large swaths of bight colors and hints of chinese people carrying water jugs on sticks draped across there shoulders hidden in the splashes of color.  To more detailed pencil sketches on another wall, of the journey across america as the Chinese people built the rail road and the country side they saw along the way.  And on the far wall a projector shined a train filling the entire wall, the audio plays the sounds of the train.  People talking and the trains horn blowing.

I made my way to the center of the room, where a large scroll is laid out, a work in progress the decription says.  It’s of the battle in Tacoma, where the Chinese where being run out of town.  This 20 foot long scroll showed this battle in great detail, drawn in pencil and pen.  It’s a vision of the past events, but shows current building and a street with concrete and skyscrapers lining the side.  All of the Chinese are penciled in, and the artist left there faces out.  they are shown carrying their belongings, and are being escorted out of town by the white mobs.  All if the whites are drawn in pen, and their faces are all present unlike the Chinese.  It’s eerie, spooky, and sad.  The tie between modern and the history of the past the artist used, makes you think.  Did he do this to represent the lack of respect these whites showed these Chinese, showing that the chinese where treated like they weren’t people.  Or is it because the piece was a work in progress and the artist will come in later and pencil in all the chinese faces.  I honestly thing he is trying to show us something deeper.  I enjoyed Zin’s style and his use of pencil, the detail he chooses to put in the scroll with the modern crosswalks and skyscrapers, made me feel like he was saying these chinese were ghost in tacoma.

Leaving the exhibit thinking, I wandered back out through the up beat canned music and back out into the streets of tacoma to have my munch in the sun.  As I sat outside waiting for the class to congregate and the bus to show.  I couldn’t help picture the Chinese being run out of town along the street in front of me and how I think Zin had done a great job of making me think about the battle in the streets of Tacoma.  We loaded back onto the yellow school bus and headed off to our last stop on the field trip.

Reconciliation Park

So after seeing the Zin scroll, and it still fresh in my mind we ventured over to a small park along Tacoma’s water front.  A place where the people of Tacoma built a park to reconcile with the misdoings of the Chinese people in 1885, where white people ran the Chinese out of Tacoma.  And holy shit was this a weird way of showing the Chinese they where sorry for what had happened to them just over a 100 years ago.  The park itself is beautiful, there is a Chinese built Fuzhou Ting, or open air building, a pretty bridge and a cool Stonehenge esk rock formation.  But what the hell, could they have put the park in any better of a location or was this the only “suitable” place to house this little gem of reconciliation?  Nestle tightly between the railroad tracks and the giant US naval ships docked just east of the park.  It didn’t give me a very good feeling at all, and I’m not Chinese.  And right next to the train tracks, and the overpass.  Man, couldn’t they have found a more respectful part of the city to put this park?  I mean the gesture is nice and all, but this is similar to the supreme court throwing out the Chinese suit against the people behind the act of running the Chinese out of their homes and businesses.

All and all I if you got to the park at the right time, I’m sure you can find some peace there.  But I think it just continues to show the lack of compassion given to people of color by our government.  And I hope the generations of the future who become the folks that run our government, think a little more compassionately about the people who built our country into what it is today.  And we can all start to live in this melting pot cohesive and show respect in a proper way to each other.  No matter where continent or island all of our people immigrated here from.