Author: Tamiko Nimura

Literature Music Poetry

The Finest Work Songs: Alan Lau and Susie Kozawa

On October 18th, Alan Lau and Susie Kozawa (longtime collaborators and working artists) will be revisiting a piece that they originally presented at the Seattle Art Museum in 1996. Lau’s part, initially a response to the Seattle Art Museum’s exhibit “In The American Grain,” will provide a reading poetry as well as words from four modernist American artists, while Kozawa will respond to Lau’s poetry as well as the space itself. Over e-mail, I asked the two to talk about their experiences with artistic collaboration, their experience with this piece, and with each other.

by Tamiko Nimura 15 October, 2012
Culture Music Performing Arts Visual Arts

The Finest Work Songs: A Tour of Seattle Artists Working Together

From these questions and these spaces, I wanted to start something a little different: a series highlighting collaborations among Seattle-area artists. I want to break down the myth of the solitary artist. I want to find out more about artistic collaboration: the rewards, the challenges, and the logistics. I want to get to know the practitioners, the people who are doing collaborative work, not just the people who talk about collaborative work. I want to see the contours of how Seattle artists work together. I want to see how that might inspire other artists within and outside Seattle.

by Tamiko Nimura 9 October, 2012
Culture Sports

Why Ichiro’s Departure Makes This Nikkei Girl Sad

Ichiro’s image was linked in my mind with my father, my cousins and uncles, the members of my Japanese American family who love baseball. Ichiro is Japanese, not Japanese American, but seeing him at the plate reminded me of those Ansel Adams pictures, taken of Japanese American players during World War II, behind barbed wire. Ichiro was a Japanese man, succeeding wildly at an all-American pastime.

by Tamiko Nimura 24 July, 2012