The Salina Journal from Salina, Kansas • Page 54

Page 10 The SaUna Journal Sunflower Sunday, August ARTIST'S EQUIPMENT BOX Sachio Yamashita, SaUna's artist-in- residence, reaches for something from his box of equipment. Photos by Evelyn Burger Story by Kay Berenson Sunday, August 9,1981 The 1 Salina Journal Sunflower Page 11 I I i i I Kansas Profiles MURAL WORKERS Three young Salinans work Keeling, 2037 Quincy; Rodney Brown, 1015 Neal, on Sachio's mural at the First National Bank and Jeff Chaltas, 1818 Lewis building in downtown Salina. From left are John Sachio Yamashita, Salina's artist-in-residence this summer, wants to paint a grain elevator. Why? "Because the grain elevator is there." Sachio has already finished a mural on the old swimming pool in Oakdale Park, and is just winding up work on his mural on the side of the First National Bank Building in downtown Salina. The creative work on the bank mural is done.

A brightly colored design of yellow tilted blocks, "wheat," grain elevators, sky, sun, plow and horseshoe, hangs on the wall of his temporary studio in the lower level of the bank. Sachio is! still occupied with supervising young workers on the mural outside, arranging for the scaffolding and barricades to keep them safe, but artistically he has already left this project behind. He is moving on, in search ojt another drab surface to brighten. Sachio considers himself a "community artist." He does traditional paintings, traditional at least in the sense that they can be framed and hung in galleries, though they may be partially "painted" with an electric drill, leaving a row of raised dots on white canvas. But he is better known for his "environmental" works, like brightly painted and numbered water towers in Chicago (he planned to do 1,000 but completed Salino's colorful and share his 16); a blue cow on the wall of a building on the town square of Neligh, a rainbow mural to brighten a tunnel in Chicago.

Some of Sachio's fame comes as well from the projects he designed but could never manage to get official approval for: A giant beer can emblazoned with a Sachio label and topped with a replica of the Statue of Liberty for Milwaukee's Harbor Bridge; a huge rainbow-colored fan "to ward off tornadoes" to be placed atop a tall office building in Omaha. Admittedly, some of Sachio's designs are a bit impractical. Sachio can laugh at himself as well as at the world. He has a favorite among the many newspaper stories about him and his work in his scrapbook It's the one that is "not too serious," It's hud to know how seriously to take Sachio. Born in Japan in 1933, he grew up during World War II in the Japanese countryside.

He developed a lasting dislike for war. "If one person dies, how many people are in pain? They want to know why. At least 25 to 100 people cry for one person no matter how he dies. If he dies from the war equiD- ment, there is more pain." THE ARTIST AND HIS WORK Sachio Yamasita talks about a detail from one of his paintings exhibited at the Salina Art Cen- ter. While he's better known as an environmental artist the designer of large murals for outside walls of buildings and colorful touches on public buildings and structures he also does smaller works such as this one.

visiting artist wants to brighten drab cities Wosophy of 1 with young Americans After art school in Tokyo, he turned his political sen timents and artistic talents to use as a political cart toonist for a leading Japanese newspaper. That brought him to the United States in 1968. He wast cover the Democratic convention. The student anti-war demonstrators reminded him the Japanese student government actions he had beei involved in. And he found a great gray city waiting foi his rainbow palette.

He took a teaching job in the Chi cago area and stayed on. In the intervening years, Sachio has become "a per manent resident of the United States." That's his anf swer when asked where he lives now. He maintains home base in Chicago, but wanders the Midwest like gypsy, casting his carnival colons over cityseape? along his route. Much of his work now is done in school residency programs. Sachio's desire to share his with American young people ranks right behind the wish to transform drab American cities.

He talks with them about art and about living. For Sachio, the two go together, the same philosophy applies to both. The key word in that philosophy is "tanima," roughly translated as a ravine between two mountains, but implying much more than that Tim 'Tan- ima" is the place between two opposites where a balance of power is maintained. Life, Sachio says, is always a struggle between opposites, between war and peace, between east and west, between man and woman. The ravine Sachio sees and depicts in much of his work is a place lit by sunshine and darkened by the shadows on either side.

Seeing life as "tanima," means you must do everything as well as you can, and enjoy everything as much as you can. Kansas is a good place for that message to take hold, Sachio says. Kansans constantly confront forces such as the wind and the weather which human beings cannot control. "If we all work together we can make a little bit of change," he says. Sachio tries to work a little bit of change on his young helpers as well.

He worries that Kansas youngsters grow up too safe, too protected from the harsh realities of the world outside. "I like to keep my eyes open to what's going on in the world. Here in Salina the kids don't know what's going on in the world. They are very nice, very naive." Some of the message at least gets through. John Keeling, who has worked with Sachio on the mural projects this summer, says he has learned much from the artist's philosophy, from seeing the artist as concerned about the safety and comfort of his young assistants as he is about the art work in progress.

"The way I see Sachio," John says, "is everything is done to the max working hard, playing hard." Art for Sachio is in living well, as much as it is in painting buildings. But living well does not necessarily mean living with many possessions. It means cooking well to be sure he can get the "right food" he considers essential to keeping his 47- year-old body healthy. Living well includes eating spinach, made so delicious he converted John from a spinach-hater to a spinach-lover. Spinach is part of his "insurance." He doesn't carry the other kind.

"If you have insurance, you fall down from the scaffolding, they can't do anything about pain. They give you money. What is money? "The guarantee is your own style to make you happy, to keep you safe." Some might argue about Sachio's artistic talent, but few could argue that he has his own style. It's a style composed of opposites: The artist who wears a scarf around his neck in disregard for convention, but shows up for a photography session in a neatly pressed traditional white shirt. Sachio is the artist who says "It's not my responsibility to explain (my paintings).

That's not my job." Then he spends afternoons and evenings talking to people about his message. Sachio is the egotist who says "I don't have to put a title (on my works), people see my name," but is thrilled that Salinans have purchased works from his exhibit because "they don't buy because I am famous, they buy because the painting appeals to them." Sachio is the permanent resident of the U.S. whose English is still so unsteady that one is never quite sure if what he has just said is brilliant and original or just mistranslated from the Japanese. Sachio doesn't answer questions about how "typical" Americans compare to Japanese. "I don't know typical American.

I met many Americans," he says. Spending time with Sachio leaves one with much the same feeling. Among the many Sachios you have met, is there a typical one?.