2024
DECEMBER 7, 1941 - FEBRUARY 22, 2025
KEVIN J MIYAZAKI
December 7, 2024 - February 22, 2025
Opening Reception Hours: 6 PM - 9 PM, Saturday, December 7th, 2024
Hawthorn Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening exhibition of December 7, 1941 - February 22, 2025, featuring works by Milwaukee-based artist Kevin Miyazaki.
Kevin Miyazaki’s exhibition is an homage to his grandfather, who was labeled as an “enemy alien” and arrested on December 7, 1941. Miyazaki transformed the gallery space for viewers to confront the dark American history during World War II when more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned in concentration camps.
Japanese American poet Brandon Shimoda has written a poem especially for the exhibition, which will be available as a takeaway on letterpress cards at the gallery.
"If you consider service to the country as true Americanism and disregard the superficialities that are always present in the distinctions between races and nationalities, you will realize that no matter how different may be your blood and your physiognomy, you will be accepted as a real American." - Carl Shintaro Miyazaki, 1935
My grandfather, Carl Shintaro Miyazaki, emigrated alone from Japan in 1899, leaving his home in Kumamoto City and arriving in Seattle at the age of 16. He learned English, put himself through high school and business college, married, had a family and become an important community leader in Tacoma. He had lived in the United States for 42 years by December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in the U.S. Territory of Hawai’i. That night, he was arrested in his home.
Immigrants from Asian countries, even those who had called the U.S. home for decades, were not legally allowed to become naturalized citizens. My grandfather was held in a series of Department of Justice camps for “enemy aliens,” which imprisoned business and community leaders, priests, journalists and teachers, both from the West Coast and from Hawai’i. My father, his three siblings and my grandmother, Matsuko Matsukawa Miyazaki, were incarcerated in three consecutive camps during the war and were only reunited with my grandfather 18 months after his arrest. He was never found guilty of a crime.
This work continues my interest in my family history and how it has been shaped in part by political acts, racism and societal fear. Sadly, the incarceration of Japanese Americans and their loss of civil liberties is always relevant, and perhaps now than ever."
Kevin J. Miyazaki is an artist and photographer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His artwork focuses on issues of identity, memory and place, often addressing family history and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War ll. Miyazaki was born and raised in suburban Milwaukee, physically and culturally far from ancestral roots in Japan, Hawaii and Washington state. His artwork have been exhibited at venues including The Museum of Wisconsin Art, Haggerty Museum of Art, Jewish Museum Milwaukee, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Griffin Museum of Photography, The Center for Photography at Woodstock and the Hyde Park Art Center. His editorial publication clients include Smithsonian, Architectural Digest, The New York Times, Rizzoli and Knopf.
CASCADE AND CADENCE
DERRICK VELASQUEZ
September 14th, 2024 – November 17th, 2024
Opening Reception Hours: 6 PM - 9 PM, Saturday, September 14th, 2024
Hawthorn Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening of Derrick Velasquez’ solo exhibition ‘Cascade and Cadence’.
“My work places sculpture and installation in conversation with architecture and design. My focus on the modern aesthetics and ornamentation of contemporary residential buildings created in urban developments critiques the social, political and economic forces affecting our everyday psychological experience within a city by looking at the physical spaces we occupy. Through observation and research, I manipulate common construction materials, architectural crown molding, and leaded stained glass to at once parody historical bourgeois aesthetics and challenge high brow modern architecture, art and design. These works come in the form of large-scale installations and sculptures as well as photography, collage and other media. Physical space and direct relationship to these installations and objects are instrumental in making the conceptual connection between our own bodies and the buildings and structures we interact with on a daily basis.”
Derrick Velasquez is an artist and exhibition organizer who lives and works in Denver, Colorado. He was a 2017 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors and a 2019 MacDowell Fellow. Derrick has served on the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs and the boards of Denver nonprofits Tilt West, Union Hall, and Minerva Projects. His most recent exhibitions include solo shows at The Herron School of Art and Design, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Robischon Gallery (Denver), Pentimenti (Philadelphia), Carvalho Park (Brooklyn), Galerie Robertson Ares (Montreal) and The Black Cube Nomadic Museum, and group exhibitions at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Transmitter in New York. Derrick founded Yes Ma’am Projects, an artist-run gallery in the basement of his Athmar Park home and Friend of a Friend, a new project space in the Evans School, a mostly vacant schoolhouse in Downtown Denver. He has organized exhibitions at the MCA in Denver, Trestle Gallery in New York, The Carnegie in Covington, Kentucky and at Galerie Robertson Arés in Montreal.
TEARS SHAPED LIKE WATERMELON SEEDS
WILLIAM J. ANDERSEN, ZUHAL FERAIDON, NINA GHANBARZADEH, REMA GHULOUM, DAVID NAJIB KASIR, KEVIN J. MIYAZAKI, MATTHEW PRESUTTI, SHAHZAAD RAJA, JAVE GAKUMEI YOSHIMOTO
May 11, 2024 – August 24, 2024
Opening Reception Hours: 6 PM - 9 PM, Saturday, May 11th, 2024
Hawthorn Contemporary, in collaboration with David Najib Kasir, presents Tears Shaped Like Watermelon Seeds, a group exhibition and benefit to support humanitarian relief efforts for Gaza. This exhibition features the works of William J. Anderson, Zuhal Feraidon, Nina Ghanbarzadeh, Rema Ghuloum, David Najib Kasir, Kevin Miyazaki, Matt Presutti, Shahzaad Raja, and Jave Yoshimoto.
In an excerpt from the exhibition statement, Kasir writes, Tears Shaped Like Watermelon
Seeds is an exhibition that draws artists to ask for a humanitarian response in their work as
we witness the bombing of people and their land. With the death toll of children greater
than the modern world has seen, and over 30 thousand casualties of men and women in
less than half a calendar year. How do we respond to the imprisonment and separation of
families? How do we respond to corporations and governments in aiding of a genocide? The
call is now for art to tell the truth. The call is now for artists to demand a ceasefire and
peace.”
Tears Shaped Like Watermelon Seeds will open with a silent auction, and Hawthorn Contemporary
will donate all proceeds to humanitarian relief efforts like ActionAid International.
Exhibiting Artist Bios
William J. Andersen’s artwork and point of view have been primarily influenced by his travels
between the US and Asia over the last three decades. During this time, he has watched as regions
like the Middle East and East Asia have emerged as economic and cultural forces and is fascinated
by the tightening global web of economics, resource use, migration, and cultural hybridization.
Living and traveling within such diverse regions and cultures for much of his life has directed his
creative outlook to the notions of displacement, globalization, and hybridity. Using traditional and
new media approaches, his artwork often incorporates chinoiserie imagery, an interest acquired
early on amid his mother’s collection of blue and white china.
Zuhal Feraidon is an artist born in Afghanistan. She immigrated to the United States as a refugee
of war in 2005. She received her undergraduate degree in Studio Arts from The University of
Virginia and her MFA in Painting from The Rhode Island School of Design. She currently teaches
as an Assistant Professor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. Zuhal has exhibited nationally
and internationally and has been published in a book titled "The Art of Being Dangerous: Exploring
Women and Danger through Creative Expression" by Leuven University Press in Belgium. She is
a member of Women Forward International's Arts Advisory Committee and Council based in
Washington, DC. Her artistic interest is concerned with social identity and the politics of
representation. Zuhal's work focuses on resilience, strength, and survival in response to the
circumstance of war.
Nina Ghanbarzadeh is a visual artist who emigrated from Tehran, Iran in 2001. She earned her
BFA with a double major in painting, drawing and graphic design from the University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee in 2013 and completed a two-year AIR Program with Redline Milwaukee in 2015. Nina
is a 2024 Mary L. Nohl Fellow in the Established Artist Category, the winner of best in the show
in Wisconsin Biennial 2020 and received the Fredric R. Layton Foundations Scholarship. She is
also a teaching artist and has been involved in many workshops, lectures, presentations, and
critiques. Recent focus in her work has been the intersection of text and image and the potential
of using text to create movement and texture.
Rema Ghuloum lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She received her BFA in Drawing and Painting
from California State University, Long Beach in 2007 and her MFA from California College of the
Arts in San Francisco in 2010. Rema has exhibited nationally and internationally and has been the
recipient of multiple grants including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the Joan Mitchell
Foundation Grant, Davyd Whaley Foundation Artist-Teacher Grant, and the Esalen Pacifica Prize.
Rema’s work has been reviewed in Art Forum, Hyperallergic, The Wall Street Journal, CARLA, the
LA Times, among others. Rema is represented by Philip Martin Gallery in Los Angeles.
David Najib Kasir, a Milwaukee-based painter whose work is comprised of personal narratives
and cultural history or events. In recent years, Kasir's work draws on stories from his parents’
journey to the U.S. and the current crisis from where they migrated (his mother migrated from
Syria, and his father, Iraq). As an artist born here, Kasir reveals his cultural identity in paint and
designs to inform viewers on the recent wars in Syria, in hopes of helping them develop an
understanding of the millions of voiceless Arabs now living in chaos and disarray. By using
beautiful traditional Arab designs called Zellige to dress the figures in his work, Kasir shows the
beauty of a culture and the tragedy as families try to hold on to it and each other as everything
around them falls apart. Kasir has a BFA in painting from Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design
(2001) and is the proud father of two young adult daughters (one being an artist themselves).
Kevin J. Miyazaki is an artist and photographer living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His work
addresses themes of identity, ethnicity and memory, often focusing on his family history and the
incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. His work has been exhibited at the
Museum of Wisconsin Art, The Haggerty Museum of Art, Jewish Museum Milwaukee, Madison
Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hyde Park Art Center, among others venues. Miyazaki's
first public art commission, a series of portraits in partnership with Indian Community School, is
now on view at the Baird Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Matthew Presutti is a print and paper artist originally from the foothills of the Appalachian
Mountains nestled in rural southeastern Ohio. The region's rich history of social activism and the
beauty of its forgotten landscape are the driving force behind his artistic practice and research
into sustainable studio methods. Presutti received his BFA from Ohio University in 2006 and MFA
in printmaking from the University of South Dakota in 2013. He is an Adjunct Faculty Member and
Printmaking Lab Technician at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design where he teaches
printmaking, papermaking and book arts. Presutti is the founder of HOAX, a non-commercial
research exhibition space & print shop located in Bay View neighborhood of
Milwaukee. He’s currently researching papermaking with raw hemp fibers grown in southeastern Wisconsin
courtesy of Dr. Shekinah of the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute.
Shahzaad Raja is a self-taught mixed media artist. He is a Pakistani American based out of
Chicago, IL. All of his work is handmade, cut from magazines, books, and newspapers. He uses
his work to reflect different social and political issues of our time. He is affiliated with the Chicago
based Artists against Apartheid organization, where he is featured at their bi-monthly shows to
help raise money for various organizations in Gaza. You can find his work wheatpasted around
different parts of Chicago, most notably on the northside.
Jave Gakumei Yoshimoto is an artist and educator of multi-cultural background. He was born
in Japan to Chinese parents and immigrated to California at a young age. He is a recipient of the
2015 Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Painter’s and Sculptor’s grant, which he used to travel to Nepal
and Lesvos Island in Greece to research on the topics on human crisis, survival, empathy and
resilience. Yoshimoto currently works as an Associate Professor of Art at University of Nebraska
at Omaha.
THE COCONUT EFFECT
DAWN CERNY
March 2, 2024 – April 27, 2024
Opening Reception Hours: 6 PM - 9 PM, Saturday, March 2, 2024
Hawthorn Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening exhibition of The Coconut Effect, featuring
works by Seattle-based artist Dawn Cerny.
The drawings and sculptures in the exhibition, created in 2023 and 2024, are meditations on looking and
embracing the limitations of space as confined and defined by life and responsibilities. Cerny’s works
inhabit the gallery as a memorandum of encounters in a domestic space. Often incorporating readily
available handicraft materials, drawings become sculptural objects, thus playfully complicating the
expectations of drawings and perceptions of sculpture as three-dimensional objects.
Dawn Cerny was born in Carpinteria, CA and currently lives in Seattle, WA. Cerny’s sculptures, works
on paper, and collaborative projects have been exhibited in institutions and galleries across North
America, including Cooper Cole, Toronto, MOCA, Los Angeles, Western Front, Vancouver and Micki
Meng Gallery, San Francisco. She has had solo shows at The Seattle Art Museum, The Portland Art
Museum, The Henry Art Gallery and is currently preparing for a 2025 exhibition at the Frye Museum.
Cerny’s sculptures and works on paper are held in public collections, including The Walker Art Gallery,
SFMOMA, The Henry Art Gallery, The Portland Art Museum and The Seattle Art Museum. She is the
recipient of two Washington State Artist Fellowships, the 2020 Betty Bowen Award, the 2022 Bonnie
Bronson Visual Arts Fellowship and the 2022 Joan Mitchell Fellowship. Her exhibitions and work have
been written about in Art Forum, Bomb Magazine, the International Sculpture Center Blog, The Stranger
and The Seattle Times. Dawn Cerny currently teaches at Seattle University.