Toshi's travels in the Japanese northern alps took him to a tiny village named Miasa. Translated, Miasa means "beautiful hemp." In this village, Toshi found an abandoned 19th century school house, which he purchased and developed as an art and cultural center. This establishment is called the Bunkacenter, and is run today by one of Toshi's sons, Hitoshi.

Few people know that Toshi's father Hiroshi was a modernist (influenced by Western art), or that Hiroshi's adoptive father, Kosburo, was also a painter in Western tradition. Kosburo studied with the Italian painter Antonia Fontanesi. Kosburo's daughter, Fujio was also a painter. Fujio and Hiroshi traveled and exhibited together internationally. Fujio and Hiroshi were eventually married. Their first son, Toshi, shared the gift of his parents and, while he developed his individual skills as a painter, he also became a business manager and workshop manager for his father.

Hiroshi's second son, Hodaka, while showing early signs of art interests was encouraged instead to pursue the field of science. Hodaka, with the complicity and encouragement of Toshi, worked hidden away in the attic on his own paintings. One of these paintings was given an award, ironically enough by Hiroshi, who had been asked to jury the competition his son had secretly entered.

Hodaka also married an artist, Chizuko. Their daughter, Ayomi, has traveled internationally like the previous three generations. Ayomi learned silk screen printing at the Mendocino Art Center.

From August 1 to September 1, the Art Center presents the Yoshida Family Exhibit, the wood-block prints of three generations of Yoshida printmakers: Hiroshi, Toshi, Hodaka, Chizuko and Ayomi.

Many threads run through this family's artistic tradition, which acknowledge their growth and development as individual artists more than as craftsmen carrying on a single tradition.

"Morning on Tsurugisan" By Hiroshi Yoshida

Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950) was a master of the great vista, similar in many ways to 19th century Western landscape painters such as Frederick Church, Albert Bierstadt and Gustave Courbet. His paintings executed in this Western style were popular in Japan, and he became successful and financially secure enough to do considerable foreign travel. He decided in the 1920s to pursue wood block prints, having already become well established as a mature painter. While Hiroshi's realistic images of spectacular sunsets and great monuments were contemporary, his printmaking technique was in the 200-year-old Ukiyo-e tradition. In this tradition, the artist creates the image, which is then transferred to wood blocks to be carved by one artisan then printed by another.

Toshi Yoshida (1911-1995), Hiroshi's first son, was the individual that Hiroshi would most deeply imprint with his sense of natural beauty and light. Toshi, while travelling with his father, painted and made prints of many of the same subjects that Hiroshi used. Toshi brought his own sensibility of quiet, stark power to scenes that his father would romanticize. Dr. Eugene Skibbe of Augsbury College effectively compares the differences between two versions of Mt. Rainier, one created by Hiroshi and another created by Toshi. The former image is of the mountain in springtime with lavender covered hillsides caught as a moment of "romantic revere" by the artist. Toshi's image is a "cold prominence" in blues and grays capturing the "stark strength of the dominant rock."

Chizuko met Hodaka about the time that he won his award at the Taiheiyo exhibition (presented by Hiroshi). She was a painter since childhood, but credits Hodaka as her printmaking teacher. While the use of zinc photo engravings connect her images with Hodaka's, Chizuko's work is generally more fluid, even musical. The patterns of lines and textures, whether they are abstractly carved strokes or dissolving fields of flower blossoms, give lyrical rhythms. In Chizuko's work, the viewer can see another characteristic of sosaku hanga, where a plate or block from one print becomes the initiating matrix of a new, different image. Chizuko's use of blended colors creates the effect of wind waves across a hillside. This wind quality is reinforced with the abstract slashes in several prints, building a sense urgency in movement.

Ayomi, the daughter of Chizuko and Hodaka presents the most abstract work of the Yoshida family. One might even describe it as the most Zen. Ayomi's woodcuts are nonobjective, when compared with Hiroshi, Toshi, Hodaka and Chizuko. Her grid-like patterns of wide chisel and gouge marks explore the fundamental process of sosaku hanga. Rather than translations of watercolor images into woodblock form, Ayomi's prints are musings on the rhythm of carving and chipping small pieces of wood from a plane. Her printing of multi-layers of these grids might allude to tapestry, or microscopic views of the wood fibers or perhaps a strong internal visual imprint of waves, like her Uncle Toshi had at age three. It is my belief that Ayomi's work makes reference, not to the observed movement of water, but to the felt rhythms of carving as the chisel bites the wood and then releases. Several images are called Touches.

"Touches" By Ayomi Yoshida

The viewer of this exhibition is treated to a record of art movements in Japan which parallels many of our own art movements in Western art history. Hiroshi's prints show the influence of Impressionism and luminous paints. Toshi's prints respond to the awe inspiring vistas of American regionalists, then later to abstractions of the 1920s to the 1940s in both Europe and the US. Hodaka's work reflects the 1960 to 1980 interest in pop culture and the media. Chizuko's prints embrace 1980s era pattern and design movements with abstract expressionist references. Ayomi's work is minimalist, but still a logical outgrowth of Eastern and Western melding and four generations of a printmaking family who have bridged aesthetic visions.