The only sound in Mary Sprague's studio is a soft scritch as she sweeps a pastel stick across rag paper pinned on a drawing wall, her gestures revealing the feathery form of an emerging personality. The rooster's chest puffs in gusty fury, his scarlet comb a plume of belligerent energy. Rarely has a fowl been in such a foul mood.

    Or so big. This bruiser is as big as the artist herself--a sturdy five feet tall. Her eyes are soft green and good-humored, framed by blondish hair. The rooster, by contrast, is clearly seething, his eyes narrowed, beady and red-rimmed under great gray tufts of eyebrow.

    As a child, Arthur Towata was taught to observe, to listen, to hold things in his head to be discussed or questioned later, in private. “That kid knows more than you think,” adults would say of the boy who was always listening.

    Murmurs, whispers and the subtle undertones of conversation did not escape him. Now, more than 60 years after the U.S. government confined his family to an internment camp in California, the Japanese-American artist is expressing through his art what he saw and heard in those three years at Manzanar. In a

group of ghostly paintings called the “Black Wall Series,”he illuminates that dark passage in history.

July/August 2008

    “I’m not really so interested in fashion or trends. I’m more interested in looking for designs that provide solutions,” says Cara McCarty, curatorial director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

    Consider something as simple as her silk blouse, a confection of pleats by a Japanese designer. Because of advances in heat-setting technology, those pleats are permanent—and make the blouse perfect for travel because it’s easily washable, dries overnight and doesn’t need ironing.

    The Japanese have a knack for recognizing a

problem—in this case, wrinkles—and working with it, rather than against it. “They take a problem and they solve it, they don’t resist it.”

Palette:
Ruffled Feathers Arts_files/MarySprague%3AAmStyle.pdf

Arts

Culture

Photo:  Ashton Worthington

Conscientious Collector
Design curator Cara McCarty likes objects to solve problems, supply joy. Arts_files/CaraMcCarty%3AStanford.pdf
 
Remembering the Black Wall Arts_files/Remembering%20the%20Black%20Wall%20-%20St%20Louis%20Magazine%20-%20December%202007%20-%20St.%20Louis,%20Missouri.pdf

Photo: Kate Morgan

April 2008

December 2007

Painting by Mary Sprague

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