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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (June 5, 1998)
CONTACTING US IEWS800R AOORESS ?541>34frSS11 Cngcr ja* e*rac E-tWJL »0 93313 | afe&ngon. xrzyxja. bjjsre. Zr*qrr VV2 ONUS BXTOIt «w» xfTsyr .jOj -a* EDITOR IN CHIEF Sarah Kickler EDITORIAL EDITOR Mike Schmierbach NIGHT EDITOR Nicole Krueger University Professor Frank Okada has connection that run throughout the Northwest art community ^ | ^here are those who qui I eriy go about their busi ® ness writing or painting M or drawing or garden - ins. They create, solitarily. The act of an audience is not why they do it — neither is money nor^ven the weather. Above alL it is simply what they do be cause they have to. This is the kind of human endeavor I most admire, which requires the per sistent faith I most respect The Northwest has been blessed with such singular indi viduals. who are often known to one another but not always to the rest of us. I have to say that one of my primary motives for wanting to be an Emerald columnist was because it provid OPINION Hannah Dillon ec a reason tor roe to talk with such individu als. And so for my last piece. I seized the op portunity to interview semi-retired University fine arts Professor Frank. Okada. whom I was aware of long oefore moving to Eugene. He was men tor to one of the rising stars of Northwest painters and my fa vorite. Sydni Sterling, as well as to other prominent local artists such as Allen Cox. "Painting is what I da” Oka da. who gets up around four in the morning and goes to his stu dio to pain! seven days a week, says softly. He came to the Uni versity in 1969 at the age of 38 and was the only Asian Ameri can acuity member unfr about 15 years ago. 'What kind of an ego did you have to have to paint when there was no market for it?" Okada muses when rensemhs-.rg Seat tle. the place where he grew up. and :3 only gallery space in the 40s and '50s. The gallery was a ' Renaissance ~ cubbyhole next to a cashier selling Frango Mints in the venerable Frederick and Nelson's department store on Fifth Avenue. Frederick's was the cultural mecca of downtown Seattle then. Where else could one go to buy such a local delica cy and after counurg out the change far it. shift slightly to see a Mark Tobey exhibit? Okada has been to Fhris on a Guggenhetm Fellowship and to Kyoto on a Fulhright While on a Whitney grant in New York Ctv. he attended 'evening seminars’ at the Cedar Bar There, he was entertainingly educated by the leading abstract expressionists of the time — Franz Kline. Mark Rothko, the de Koonings and Milton Resnick. to name a few. Tbe Cedar Bar was to artists in New York Gty in the ‘50s what the Deux Magots was to expatri ate writers in Paris in the 20s and 30s Okada returned to Seattle and created a studio, which he shared mi and off with fellow ab stract expressionist William Ivey and a grand piano. The studio became a locus of the art and lit erary scene in the city. Luminar ies such as painters Carl Morris and Mark Tobey and poets Theodore Roethke. Richard Hugo and Carolyn Kizer were part of Okada's expansive circle. Okada did not give me this juky piece of history while we were having coffee. Instead. I talked with artist Alien Cox. who was glad to offer a few nuggets. Cox said that Okada's artistic Lineage is in direct line with the origins! abstract painters of die Northwest — To bey. Morris and Ivey. Okada came in under their wings. He also added that he has never heard anything less than ^co lades about Okada as a paints' and as a person. After that I went to my favorite library a: Lawrence Hall and found books on Okada’s old buddies. Ivey and Morris, but to my surprise there was not a monograph on Okada as of vet. 1 wondered it it would enter our conversation, and it did. A little bit here and there, again and then again The Okada fami ly was interned in a camp in Ida ho during the war. Oka-da was "tossed beck out of prison'' when he was 13. The family re turned to ‘Japantmra' in Seattle and lived in a hotel on skid row. African American families Had moved into the neighborhood while the Tapanese Americans were ‘away." Okada was ex posed to jazz then and has been listening to it nonstop ever since: ‘1 car, listen to Count Basie's 1937 rendition of "Taxi Dancing’ all day. over and over. I love its clarity and lyrical qualitv. It’s Mcszardan. I have about 1,500 CDs and Listen mostly to jazz, acoustic and classical solos while I paint." Okada's older brother John, who died at 48. wrote a nerve! called "No-No Boy* in 1930. which has become a must-reed Sot American Studies. A few years ago. the University of Washington Press received a siz able endowment tor a new senes that fecuses on Asian .American studies. It has been reprinting a number of ‘tbraotten’ books by Asuan American writers. Tohn Okada s "No-No Boy’ was ra-e if the 5rst University Professor William Rossi is teaching 'No-No Boy” in his American novel class He says it is the most interesting Asian American novel of its time because not only does it provide students with a regional quality and historical information on the relocation and internment camps, but Okada had to negoti ate between two audiences — the .Asian .American one and that of the dominant culture at a time when the latter was protesting the existence of the former. Rossi goes on to say that John Okada acknowledges the outra geous act of the camps and the ruptured experience of the Japanese .Americans as he at tempts to reintegrate the no-no boys — those who resisted the draft while interned — and the yes-yes boys who didn’t into an American life that holds out a promise of what it purports to be. could be and thinks itself is at the same time as the reality of specific incidents of racial ha tred continued to transpire. 'Snow Falling on Cedars.” by David Guterson. has recently re ceived acclamation, awards and a burgeoning audience. He used the island on which I grew up as his context for “the memory of what happened to its 'the is land’s; Japanese residents dur ing World War II. when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbors watched." My mother was in high school then and down at the dock con fused and crying while watching her friends being taken away on boats. She doesn’t remember it happening the way Guterson de picts it. “but then he wasn't there.* Anyway. I am in the mid dle of reading “No-No Boy. * It is still raw and real and extremely rich. In his short life. John Okada was able to give flesh, bone and blood to what his brother briefiy alludes to a century !atpr while sitting across the table from an admiring stranger a: The Hearth. Frank Qkada says. 'Painting is about being moved, not so much something to be under stood As a rain ter. I initiate toe visual dialogue and that's enough " He does it every day in his studio as he Has been do ing it for years — creating a tete a-tete with color. line, shape and texture while Count Basie plays — a quintessential Ameri can image. Hmmab Dtikrt s a Gjiumrjsjcr foe Emerald. Her xcm jccears « ji-e"*zg Fridays. Her neits do n-jt wtcmmritf represen foose y>e •seMpoper LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Coffee choices The great thing about living in the United States is that we can all choose what job to work, what cereal to eat and what coffee we want to drink. People living in the Northwest and students at the University enjoy one of the largest selec tions of coffee and beer in the world. Regardless of whether the EMU chooses to serve Seat tle's Best or Yuban, students still have a choice to buy it. There are a dozen different vendors of coffee on 13th Av enue, a five-minute walk from the EMU. I work for Starbucks Coffee Co., and we have the same customers every day, as do the rest of the other coffee vendors, I assume. If I go into a bar and they don’t serve the beer I like, I go to the one down the street. It’s about brand loy alty. So no matter what the EMU serves for coffee, our customers are still going to buy Starbucks, because that’s what they like to drink. If students don’t like the coffee that the EMU chooses to serve, they won’t drink it, and it won’t sell. It is not as if the EMU is isolated, and its food vendors Eire subject to the same business principles as any oth er business. It is not fair to blame Seattle Coffee Co. for having a pol ished presentation and selling the board on its coffee. The point is that whatever the EMU chooses to serve, I will still drink Starbucks Coffee, and my friend will still drink Coffee People. We are creatures of habit and what makes the Unit ed States a great country is that we have the right to exercise that choice. Business is about survival of the fittest, and if that means having a marketing exec with a Harvard degree to do your sales pitch, then the rest of the coffee companies better start saving their money. Kit Blair Business HIV misinformation Let’s make this as short as possible. 1 am an HIV counselor at White Bird Clinic and am writing to correct egregious misinformation printed in a column bv Jonas Allen (ODE, May 29), Mv coworker, Gina Tor mohlen. was badly misquoted as saying that “we're used to false positives" on HIV tests. This is wrong. Actually, false positives on HIV tests are virtu ally impossible through the testing process used by White Bird and the Oregon Health 1)1 vision. There is at least a throe step confirmation of positives that occurs on the same blood sample before clients even re ceive their results. While we believe the paper printed a large error and grave misinfor mation. the Emerald does not see fit to retract it. The editorial editor feels that the article does not detract from confidence in the testing. To the contrary. Af ter seeing several clients today at HIV testing who were con cerned about false positives as a result of the editorial, I can as sure you that the misinforma tion did affect people. Even if people reading this letter do not carry the frustra tion that I do concerning the Emerald’s lack of commitment to correct information, please take away one simple message: HIV testing, as done in Oregon and at White Bird, is very' reli able and sound. Feel free to come in for anonymous testing and ask us about reliability if you wish. Heidi Schultz HIV Counselor, White Bird Medical Clinic Editor’s note: Columnist Allen insists that Tormohlen was quoted accurately after a review of his notes. While the Emerald sympathizes with the concerns of Schultz, we do not feel the story implied that HIV testing was unreliable, but mther that procedures exist for dealing with the possibility of false positives that occur in preliminary testing. The Emer ald supports the HI\r testing work done by White Bird and gladly concurs with Schultz that testing procedures are reli able and that anyone con cerned about HI\' and AIDS should contact a member or members of the medical com munity' trained to perform both testing and counsehng. Support workers All ASUO programs, such as the Student Insurgent, as well as state education facilities, are funded by taxpayers. This means that we all benefit from the sweat and labor of the working class. Opportunism runs rampant in a society whose economic system is based on a divide between the haves and the have-nots. How ever, the left, being the champi on of the working class, has a special responsibility to focus all of its resources toward the goal of restructuring society so that there is an equitable distri bution of resources to all peo ple and thus allowing humans to labor creatively. Expropria tion of working-class funding (which Tristan Masat is ac cused of doing) is not some thing that a person truly con cerned with the plight of the working class would do. In stead, these recent ev ents at the Student Insurgent show exact ly the typo of behavior that this unfettered, turbo-charged, capi talist society creates. It is now' the responsibility of the Stu dent Insurgent to begin again — to leant from its mistakes. After all, the workers have nothing to lose but their chains. Ann Strahm Student Insurgent
