Roger Shimomura to speak for Sam Fox School Oct. 12

Celebrated artist Roger Shimomura, whose paintings and performances wittily explore issues of culture, discrimination and ethnic stereotypes, will discuss his work for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ fall Public Lecture Series at 6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 12.

The talk, titled “An American Diary,” is free and open to the public and takes place in Steinberg Hall Auditorium, located near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. For more information call (314) 935-9300 or visit samfoxschool.wustl.edu.

*Night Watch #3* (2007) by Roger Shimomura, from his series “Minidoka of my Mind.”

Shimomura was born in Seattle in 1939 but at the age of three was sent to Idaho’s Minidoka War Relocation Center, the camp for Japanese-Americans at which his family was interned during World War II. After their release, when Shimomura was five, the family returned to Seattle and began rebuilding their lives. He later attended the University of Washington, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1961.

Shimomura joined the faculty of the University of Kansas at Lawrence in 1969, shortly after earning his master’s from Syracuse University. Over the years he has addressed sociopolitical issues affecting Asian-Americans through paintings and prints (as well as theatrical performance pieces) that combine the flat graphic approach of American pop art with imagery and motifs variously suggesting racist cartoons and Japanese ukiyo-e, or “floating world,” woodblock prints.

Many of Shimomura’s paintings draw on his own experiences and on extensive diaries kept by his immigrant grandmother. One work, based on his memory of a high school dance in 1950s Seattle — which he attended with a girl whose father disapproved of “orientals” — depicts a yellow-skinned caricature snuggling up to a pretty Roy Lichtenstein-like blonde. Another painting, based on a profiling incident, depicts Shimomura and the Native American artist Edgar Heap-of-Birds wearing exaggerated ethnic costume as a young white man stares worriedly.

Shimomura’s work has been featured in more than 125 solo exhibitions and is included in the permanent collections of more than 80 museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. His experimental theater pieces have been presented at such venues as the Franklin Furnace in New York and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

A recipient of the Kansas Governor’s Arts Award, Shimomura’s many honors include more than 30 grants, including four from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1994 he became the first Fine Arts faculty member in Kansas University’s history to be honored as a University Distinguished Professor. In 1998 he was the recipient of the Higuchi Research Award, the highest annual research honor awarded to a faculty member in Humanities and Social Sciences. His personal papers and letters are being collected by the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.

Shimomura’s lecture is held in conjunction with the semester-long series “Ethnic Profiling: A Challenge to Democracy,” organized by the Center for the Study of Ethics & Human Values. For a complete schedule of events or more information about the series, call (314) 935-9358 or visit humanvalues.wustl.edu.