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Ogden man helps bring cranes to Topaz exhibit
Feb 12, 2010 (Standard-Examiner - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Before 123,000 origami cranes came to hang in a Provo art gallery, they were stuffed in plastic trash bags in Steve Koga's basement.
The Ogden resident drove to Minnesota last summer to collect the paper cranes from two teenagers who spearheaded their creation in honor of the number of Japanese-Americans interned during World War II.
Now the cranes are part of an exhibit at Brigham Young University's Harris Fine Arts Center that includes artwork created by internees at Topaz, a federal relocation center in Utah's West Desert that housed more than 8,000 Japanese-Americans.
The cranes cover three walls of a 9-by-13-foot room and are three to four layers deep. "It is impressive," says Koga, a member of the board of directors for the future Topaz Museum in Delta.
The 16-piece art exhibit, which includes traditional Japanese ink paintings by Chiura Obata, continues through Monday. The Topaz works have never been displayed in a museum; many of the pieces had to be framed for this exhibit, said Jason Lanegan, gallery manager for the Harris Fine Arts Center.
Because the internees were not allowed to have cameras, such art is the "only visual record of life in Topaz," Lanegan said.
The charcoal drawings and various paintings reflect the bleakness of the desert camp -- "you see that in everything," Lanegan says.
But they also show a desire to find beauty in a bad situation, he said. Obata was an art instructor at the University of California at Berkeley before he was interned, and while at Topaz, he founded an art school that had more than 600 students.
Through education and art, Obata figured, "This is a way I'm going to get my people through this," Lanegan says.
The exhibit also includes photographs of Topaz as well as the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after atomic bombs were dropped there at the end of World War II. The art display is running in conjunction with a play for young audiences titled "A Thousand Cranes," the story of a child who survives the bombing of Hiroshima.
The origami cranes -- a symbol of hope -- were donated to the Topaz Museum by creators Michelle Reed and Carly Gutzmann, of Egan, Minn., who started folding and collecting them in 2006. After the BYU exhibit closes, the cranes will be stored until the museum is complete, Koga says.
"The real significance to me," Koga says, "is just that these girls, with no attachment to internment whatsoever or to the Japanese community whatsoever, would take upon themselves to do this project."
"A Thousand Cranes" plays at 7 p.m. today and Saturday, and 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Saturday in the Nelke Theatre in the fine arts center. Tickets are $6 to $11 and may be purchased at (801) 422-4322 or www.arts.byu.edu.
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