Shari Arai DeBoer
Shari Arai DeBoer is a printmaker and painter. Her current work is inspired by the watercolors and crafts made by her Japanese American relatives while incarcerated in American concentration camps during WWII. Through these objects, she explores her sense of connection to this legacy, to their tremendous loss and grief and to their creative energy and resilience.
Arai DeBoer’s paintings and etchings are housed in the Alameda County Art Collection and Library of Congress Fine Print Collection. In 2018 she was awarded an artist residency at the Playa, a center for art and science in Oregon and was previously an artist-in-residence at the de Young Museum. Arai DeBoer continues to reside in the East Bay where she is active in organizations using art to build community. |
Ellen Bepp
Ellen Bepp is an Oakland-based mixed media artist and accomplished taiko (Japanese drum) musician. As a third generation Japanese American, her work is rooted in her culture and inspired by the art practices of her immigrant grandparents. Finding her voice through drumming and involvement in the Asian American political movement of the 1960s, her art amplifies the stories of her family members and others who were unjustly imprisoned in American concentration camps during WWII, and addresses other issues of social injustice while honoring ancestral wisdom.
Since 1980 her mixed media, wearable art and handcut paper works have been exhibited nationally. Her ongoing interest in the folk art traditions of Asia and Latin America has led to her textile arts research in Indigenous communities, artist residencies and humanitarian exchanges in Guatemala, Peru, Mexico, Nicaragua and Cuba. |
Reiko Fujii
Reiko Fujii was born in 1950 in Riverside, California, four years after her parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and other relatives were released from their imprisonment in WWII American concentration camps. Her life and art have forever been intertwined with the influence of the grave injustice that was forced upon her family and 120,000 other innocent people by the United States government.
This mass imprisonment and prejudice endured by twenty-two of Fujii’s relatives precipitated a pattern of anger, depression, lack of self-confidence, mistrust, and mental challenges that reverberated throughout the following generations and affected her personally as a third generation Japanese American. Fujii’s artwork is an inherent part of her healing process. It has led her to connect with others who had relatives or were unjustly incarcerated in American concentration camps themselves. The stories she has collected and documented in her art have made her especially sensitive to the United States government’s authority to do whatever they want, sometimes based on greed, prejudice and power. Fujii’s most important message to her viewers is: Be Careful Who You Vote For! |
Kathy Fujii-Oka
Kathy Fujii-Oka threads stories from the gardens of her ancestors to make art that heals. She creates with oil and acrylics on canvas or wood, textiles, mixed media and installations. Her interdisciplinary work explores themes of incarceration, immigration, culture, identity, and spirituality, which has become a birthplace of healing as her emotional voice and her ancestors find expression. .
Her latest work focuses on the Japanese incarceration and the injustice of all people of Japanese descent. Fujii-Oka honors and brings light into the lives of her family and those who were imprisoned during WWll. She expresses her sentiment and compassion through her art by sharing personal stories and how it relates to what is happening today. Through her research and work, she expands on her spiritual process and practice of meditation, which assists her to make art that heals. |
Na Omi Judy Shintani
Shintani creates healing space to reflect on injustice that touched her own family and to explore how history relates to today’s discriminatory experiences in America. She honors Japanese American incarcerees and their descendants by incorporating thoughts and memories of their unjust imprisonment into her art installations made up of text, stitching, and Japanese cultural crafts.
Shintani has exhibited throughout the US and internationally - recently with a solo exhibition at Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, and a performance with the San Francisco International Arts Festival. Her 2022 exhibitions include those at the Japanese American Museum of Oregon and the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience in Seattle. Shintani lives in Half Moon Bay and Oakland and is on the faculty of Foothill Community College. |