SYNCHRONICITY

July, 9 2024

Synchronicity is an exhibition curated by the Pen Dragons Calligraphy Guild for the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center. Several of its members have taught or are currently teaching workshops for the KBAC, including calligraphic techniques, paper marbling, collage, paper folding, and more! The guild asked its members to submit two or more works for the exhibition, with one being a response, or somehow related to the other. This might include multiple approaches to a similar idea (whether a specific quote or theme such as water or nature) with new eyes and perspectives, or contrasting pieces linked by a common thread of subject or meaning. Calligraphers love to play, and the result is an exhibition featuring diversity in media, technique, and subject matter, ranging from whimsical to meditative or somber, integrating book arts with traditional and contemporary calligraphy.

Among the 55+ pieces in the show are two different presentations of origami by Abbie Miller; a framed and hand-lettered collection of origami butterflies, and a mobile installation of origami cranes. Julie Kechele's two black-and-white calligraphic broadsides were created on scratchboard with dental tools. Jane Ewing is a long-time member with several entries. One of her collections includes studies of a quote by Basho and an English Proverb. This beautiful study of visual wordplay includes several notecard-sized studies and a larger framed piece on papyrus titled Sound of Flowers.  

One particularly poignant work is by Tina Lee–Cronkhite, Remember: Japanese Concentration Camp, referencing her mother and siblings' time as prisoners in Camp Amache, a Japanese "internment camp” in the barren desert land near Grenada, Colorado for the duration of WWII; many were US Citizens. Cronkhite's banner is embedded with personal and national history, containing transferred images of Camp Amache ephemera, including photographs, a camp map, reproductions of the art from heart-shaped pins created by camp prisoners, and an appliquéd silk Peace Crane cut from a Japanese kimono. The hand-lettered phrase "shikata ga nai" ("It cannot be helped") is the Japanese mindset of letting go of what cannot be changed that focused prisoners’ energy from the barbed wire and armed guards to living; beautifying their barren surroundings, creating art, and cultivating gardens including trees, roses, and produce that helped feed other such camps. Cronkhite's uncle obtained photography equipment and secretly developed the images in a darkroom he created by digging a 6' bunker near his family's tiny barracks. His photographs are now in the University of Denver Museum of Anthropology. (https://liberalarts.du.edu/anthropology-museum) and The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Like many of the Japanese prisoners, Tina's mother and siblings never spoke of the experience. However, in the last few decades, the site has received attention and has been studied and preserved as a National Historic Site. The documentary Amache Rose (see link below) was released in 2022, the same year Cronkhite made her pilgrimage to the site. Although the buildings were demolished immediately after the war, the cement foundations still exist, with evidence of the extensive gardens, including the original rose bushes, amazingly still alive and thriving, recently blooming for the first time. A project to preserve and grow cuttings of these beautiful pink rose bushes for the camp's descendants is in process.

In stark contrast, Cronkhite's second piece celebrates the voices of Japanese poets in "Haiku from Boulders", a brightly colored mixed media book containing Haikus carved in the large boulders within the Meijer Japanese Garden where Cronkhite, a Master Gardener, volunteers.  

See the exhibition and meet the Pen Dragons on Friday, July 12 from 5-8 p.m. at the artist's reception! Synchronicity is on view at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center Gallery through August 16. Regular gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. 

For more information on The Pen Dragons Calligraphy Guild, visit https://www.pendragonscalligraphy.org/

Amache Rose Documentary https://www.pbs.org/video/amache-rose-0sbv18/