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The Army Camp: A Researcher’s Odyssey Part 1 Before the present-day Powell Barnett Park in Leschi was acquired by Seattle’s park department, it was school district property. It was originally intended as the site of a junior high school. That never happened, and the location was eventually used as a running track for athletes at Garfield High School, which is four blocks away. By the late 1950s, the area had the look of an abandoned lot. My brothers and I, growing up not far away in Madrona, played there and explored the little caves on the hillside. The area had fallen into disuse by the school and, after the district offered it to the park department, that agency made some use of it even before acquiring title. What was then known as the “East Garfield Playfield,” sometimes referred to as “Temple Place” (from the street’s former name) was declared surplus in March 1964 and transferred from the school district to the city in February 1966, in part because of the inconvenience of crossing the new expressway, Empire Way (now Martin Luther King Jr. Way). While researching the life story of Powell Barnett, I became acquainted with his granddaughter, Maisha Barnett, who was instrumental in the renovation of the park in 2006 and has remained a guardian of the park’s quality. She mentioned to me that the location had been an “army camp” during World War II, though she had little detail about it. During the renovation, an official from the Parks Department told her that he had heard from one of the workers about a vault in the ground near the south end of the park. No details about that have emerged. However, a Japanese American woman who grew up on Alder Street across from the park told me that her mother cautioned children not to play in that area, because someone had fallen through into an underground void. I raised the question of the military camp with the downtown library’s Seattle Room staff, who came up with the following interesting tidbit: In the collection of essays Women and War in the Twentieth Century (1999), the article “The Silent Significant Minority” references an army camp at the Garfield track field. In that piece, author Ivy Arai (now Tabbara) relates a 1996 interview with Sally Sakai Tsutsumoto, who was born in 1930. Sally grew up on the 200 block of 28th Avenue, just south of the park. Ivy writes, “Many Japanese-Americans felt uncertain about their future, so families moved in together. Several families living in one home created a base so everyone could evacuate together. While Japanese Americans isolated themselves within their homes, military troops established stations to monitor Japanese activity. In Seattle, the military converted the Garfield High School track field into a temporary army camp. Intrigued, I began to look for more information about the army installation. I tracked down the author, Ivy Tabbara. She had not saved notes or a recording of her interview with Sally Tsutsumoto. Then I started looking for traces of Sally. She would be about 94 years old, and I doubted she was still alive. A search of Seattle newspapers turned up nothing about the army camp. I consulted Seattle’s Smithsonian-affiliated Wing Luke Museum, which focuses on the culture, history, and art of Asian Americans. From there I was referred to Densho, the Japanese American Legacy Project, which has a massive archive of interviews with Japanese Americans who were incarcerated after Pearl Harbor. A digital search of the archives for keywords produced nothing about the encampment. The local office of the National Archives referred me to the main collection at headquarters in Washington, DC, which pointed me to its military archives in Columbia, Maryland. The Seattle city archives steered me to the school district. Archivists at the school district headquarters were most cooperative. The collection includes the minutes of school board meetings and correspondence of the superintendents. All of it is exquisitely indexed by topic on 3x5 cards. There are plenty of hits for Garfield High School, but not a one for Army. I visited the office and read through all the board minutes from 1939 to 1941, along with all the superintendent’s correspondence for the same period. Still nothing useful. I was puzzled. It would seem that the use of school property by the Army must have been discussed and authorized at some high level in the district. Then I got back to Maisha Barnett. She wrote me, “Basically any Black Seattleite over the age of 60 knew the park as Army Camp. All of my older siblings, parents, neighbors, elders in the community, and random Black folk all called it Army Camp.” I thought I’d try that out on a couple of Garfield grads I know. Both African Americans, they had been students there in the early 1960s. I vaguely described what I was curious about, not wanting to lead them on, and each one, at about the same point in the conversations, said, “Oh, you mean the army camp.” Both had been athletes and had run on the track. But their presence there had been 20 years after the fact, and neither had an idea of why they called it that. I later learned from a Parks Department project manager that, when the park was being renovated, people he talked to in the neighborhood also referred to the army camp. Next month: A deep dive into Army archives. ~Roger Lippman The author writes monthly about Leschi history and his experiences over his 48 years in the neighborhood.

The City and community members from Leschi and surrounding neighborhoods met on 11/14 at Leschi Elementary to discuss the proposed mural for King St and 31st Ave S. There were strong, passionate opinions about the topic. Due to the very strong opposition, the City made the decision to stop their effort to move the proposal forward. They will be available if the community aligns and comes back to them with a proposal. If they don’t hear from the community (with alignment in place), they will take no action. Of the folks who attended the two meetings with the City, it’s fair to say the majority were against it. But some people raised the question of whether the group was representative of the community. We discussed this at the LCC board meeting and many of us think that’s a valid point. We recognize the passionate opinions on both sides. Until we have leaders come forward who are working to organize a representative slate of the community around their perspective, we as the Leschi Community Council don’t see how we can productively engage. Once they do, we can assist those groups with community outreach and ultimately organize a fair vote. We don’t believe that the council itself has appropriate representation to advocate one way or another. Please email us at leschicouncil@gmail.com  if you have feedback or if you’d like to get our detailed meeting recap. Note: The LCC board meetings are the Tuesday following our community meetings and are open to all. Email us if you’d like to attend.

Wing Luke Museum, 719 South King Street. Open Wednesday to Sunday 10am-5pm. Runs till May 11, 2025. Curated by the pioneering art historian Barbara Johns, this exhibition brings us three first generation (Issei) Japanese artists who were prominent as modernist painters of the American scene in the 1920s and 1930s and then taken into Japanese incarceration. They disappeared from art history until the amazing detective work and painstaking research by Barbara Johns brought them back. Over the span of many years, Johns has located descendants, art works, and most exciting of all, wartime diaries. The exhibition includes both art and diaries, giving us an intimate look at day-to-day life in the camps, including the Puyallup temporary camp, before the move to Minidoka. Most of us on the West Coast are now familiar with the fact that the Japanese were rounded up after the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, and taken into camps. They lost all their possessions except two suitcases they could carry with them. But even before that, the Alien Land Law of 1921 declared Issei could not own, lease, or rent land. In 1924, the National Origins Act created a quota system that encouraged immigration from Northern Europe. Issei could not become citizens. But the artists in this exhibition demonstrated that nothing deterred them. They had businesses and pursued painting, studying with various teachers. Takuichi Fujii was educated as a youth in Japan, then followed his father and brother to Seattle, although he was the only who stayed and made his own way. He had some training in sumi-e (ink painting, but his main training came in Seattle from various teachers and friends. He joined with Kamekichi Tokita and Kenjiro Nomura in a group called Shunjukai. The three, with other artists went on painting trips and as well as depicting the Nihonmachi district, the highly concentrated Japanese area in Seattle. Tokita had the most education in Japan, but he mainly learned painting in Seattle, coming there in 1919, after deciding not to pursue his father’s tea business. Kenjiro Nomura came to Tacoma at the age of ten and was left on his own at the age of seventeen when his parents returned to Japan. He enterprisingly moved to Seattle two years later and became involved with the cultural community. The exhibition focuses on two topics, the 1920s and 1930s paintings by all three artists, and the wartime experiences of incarceration seen in journals paintings and drawings. The paintings are a prime example of the blending of modernist perspectives and American Scene painting, with a level of authenticity rarely seen in that era. Since the artists painted their immediate surroundings in urban Seattle, scenes we can still locate today, they were deeply connected to what they were depicting. The paintings rarely include figures, but the subtle browns, reds, and ochres of the buildings set off by sharp green patches of trees, and complex perspectives give us a view we can identify. My favorite is the 4th and Yesler series, by all three artists, they explore the intersection where the Yesler bridge crosses Fourth Ave using tricky intersecting angles that gives the scene dynamic energy. When the incarceration order hit, Fujii immediately began a diary with drawings. This remarkable document, only recently discovered by Johns, gives brief comments and extraordinary drawings. Some of the journal appears in the exhibition, but there is far more in John’s excellent book, The Hope of Another Spring: Takuichi Fujii , Artist and Wartime Witness  (University of Washington Press, 2017). Johns began her trio of books of these Issei artists with Signs of Home: The Paintings and Wartime Diary of Kamekichi Tokita  (University of Washington Press, 2011). Finally, Kenjiro Nomura survived incarceration and restarted his career in the 1950s with the support of friends, creating impressive abstract paintings which are not included here but illustrated in John’s third book, Kenjiro Nomura, American Modernist  (Cascadia Art Museum, 2021). In these paintings, we clearly see the artists’ unique blend of modernism and Americanism, abruptly truncated by the incarceration. Survival of all three took different paths, but their art works and diaries have not been shown or discussed until the last few years, with Johns’ path-breaking work. “Side by Side” gives us an intimate view of the three artists. The obstacles that they overcame throughout their lives make this rediscovery all the more important. ~Susan Platt, PhD www.artandpoliticsnow.com

Shiro Kashino (1922-1997) I first learned of Shiro “Kash” Kashino while researching the life of the Filipino immigrant and labor activist Carlos Bulosan, who lived in various places in today’s International District, as well as in Leschi. I found the movie “East of Occidental” (free to Seattle Public Library cardholders on the Kanopy.com  website). Eighteen minutes into the film there is a photo of a child in a Leschi School baseball uniform. That was Kash, who was interviewed for the video. Kash was the son of Japanese immigrants, a Nisei (the first generation born in the US). As I searched for more information about him, I learned that he was born in Leschi in 1922, the youngest of six children, at 512 32nd Avenue, which his parents had rented when they moved to Seattle from Denver in about 1918. After both of his parents died within a year (1934 and 1935), the older children moved the family to what was once called Renton Hill – now thought of as the southern part of Capitol Hill, near 18th and Columbia. (In 1941, the Leschi house was sold to the parents of a college classmate of mine.) Life moved along. Kash was a star player on the Garfield High School football team that won the all-city championship. But everything changed, of course, after Pearl Harbor. By May 1942, every person of Japanese descent on the West Coast, whether a citizen or not, had been ordered to report to “assembly centers” and then relocated to concentration camps inland. Most Japanese Americans in the Puget Sound area were first sent to makeshift camps at the Puyallup Fairgrounds, and then to Minidoka, Idaho, a barren desert tract that was soon fashioned to primitive quarters for many thousands. Kash had lived most of his young life in what he referred to as “all-white” Leschi, which it pretty much was in those days. He later said that growing up among whites, and then attending multi-racial Garfield, taught him how to get along with people of different backgrounds and to assimilate. He was unreserved – atypical of Nisei males, his daughter told me – and stood up for what he thought was right. He was short, but if bullied by bigger students at Garfield, he fought back. The concentration camp was his first exposure to a Japanese community. Before the war, most Japanese Americans in Seattle lived in Nihonmachi (Japantown), centered from Yesler Way to Jackson Street, from today’s International District up to about 18th Avenue. A couple years into World War II, the Nisei were offered the opportunity to enlist in the US military. Many joined, anxious to demonstrate their loyalty to the land of their birth and citizenship. Kash was among them, assigned to the all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which fought the Nazis valiantly in France and Italy. He took on a leadership role and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, six Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, and one Silver Star, along with other commendations. After the war, Kash married and returned to Seattle, where he became an esteemed community leader. He helped establish the Nisei Veterans Committee’s memorial hall, in Seattle’s historic Japantown, which, to this day, honors this son of Leschi. An important achievement of Kash’s was raising the money to erect the memorial monument at Lakeview Cemetery in honor of those Washington state veterans who were killed in action. This was accomplished around 1949. In his leadership of the committee, Kash steered it as not only a veterans’ group but also a community organization. He encouraged sponsorship of youth athletic programs for basketball and baseball. He was the organizer for many community events that encouraged the families and community members to engage in social interactions such as dances, bazaars, and picnics. Because of the discrimination at the time, these social events were important in rebuilding a Japanese American community. Shiro Kashino died in 1997. The funeral of this important and beloved Japanese American community leader was attended by 750 people. His story has been told in the Seattle Channel video “Community Stories: Shiro Kashino” (20 minutes, 2015); in the movie “Kash, the Legend and Legacy of Shiro Kashino,” by Vince Matsudaira (2011); and the book “American Grit,” by John Suzuki (2023). Showings of the movie can be arranged through the Nisei Veterans’ Committee in Seattle. See also the PBS video “Betrayed: Surviving An American Concentration Camp.” (2022, 57 minutes) Special thanks for their assistance to Kash’s daughter Debbie Kashino; Michael J. Yaguchi, Lt Col, USAF, retired, presently Commander of the Nisei Veterans Committee of Seattle; and Vince Matsudaira, movie director. ~Roger Lippman The author writes monthly about Leschi history and his experiences over his 48 years in the neighborhood.

The Office of Planning & Community Development (OPCD) is currently taking public comment on draft maps for zoning changes. The public comment period will be open from October 16 to December 20. The OPCD will host a series of information sessions, one in each of the seven Council Districts and two virtual. Information Sessions are opportunities to engage with OPCD staff, ask questions about the proposed zoning, and learn more about how to provide your feedback. They will also offer virtual office hours.  You can find info about the info sessions and office hours on the Zoning Update site. To get to the site, search online for “one Seattle plan zoning update” or use this shortcut link: bit.ly/3A99Pqy . From the homepage, click the Engagement link for information session details and options to register for virtual office hours.  District 3’s session is scheduled for Thursday Nov 7, 5:30-7:30pm at 153 14th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122. The second virtual information session will be on Thursday, Dec 12, 5:30-7:30pm, link available on the website. You can reach the OPCD project team with your questions at oneseattleplan.zoning@seattle.gov . ~Ashley Martin

How did folks get around before I-5, Rapid Ride buses and traffic choked streets? Come to hear Junius Rochester’s talk about the Mosquito Fleet. “Why did both Natives and Euro-Americans find Lake Washington (also known as “It-How-Chug,” “Hyas Chuck,” later “Lake Geneva” and “Lake Washington”) perfect for home sites, recreation and business?  Once the haven of mollusks, deer, bear, mink, coot, loons and swans, this great body of water evolved into a community of canoes, sternwheelers, and sail boats. Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker loomed above both ends. Logging was underway in the 1850s. In 1887 a rattling cable car from the Big City arrived at Leschi, and in 1889 a wild amusement park arose on the shore. This watery environment boomed in 1916 after the lake dropped nine feet following the opening of Montlake Cut. Development companies invited newcomers with the promise that the lake harbored “no pestilence or plague; no famines; and failure of crops is unknown.” November 13 at 7pm. Grace United Methodist Church, 722 30th Ave. S on the lower level.

Here is a quick update from the Public Safety committee, which has been a slow-moving process so far. We're continuing discussions with the city about installing “Your Speed is XX” signs along Lakeside and are looking into alternative funding options. We hope to have more details by the end of October. We’ve also begun exploring the possibility of adding crossing lights at Leschi Place & Lakeside and Lake Washington Blvd & Lakeside for added safety. Regarding the Lake Washington Boulevard project between Seward Park and Mount Baker, while it doesn’t directly affect our area, it should help reduce traffic speeds along the lake. You can see the latest news by following this link . Beyond traffic, we’ll also focus on emergency preparedness and neighborhood safety. I've been reaching out to nearby communities to learn from their programs, and we'll share more updates as we gather information. More to come soon!

“Johannes Kunst Hiding from the Nazis,” Center on Contemporary Art, curated by Matthew Kangas, September 5-28. Alice Dubiel “Landscape Tales,” Center on Contemporary Art in Collins Pub, 526 Second Ave. Open 11:30am to closing until October 31. Nothing is easy to understand or predictable in these two exhibitions, both sponsored by the Center on Contemporary Art (COCA). Matthew Kangas’s curated exhibition of the work of Johannes Kunst, presents a constantly changing style and iconography, while Dubiel’s “Landscape Tale” juxtaposes maps, literary quotes and reproductions of 19th century landscape paintings to provoke us to find connections between them. Johannes Kunst, from the Netherlands, hid from the Nazis in an attic during the war because non-Jewish young men were forced into slave labor. After the war he came to the United States, served in the army, then became a graphic designer in California, where he was an art director for the regional planning commission of Los Angeles for 25 years. At the same time, he went to two different art schools briefly in 1959 and 1980. His painting in the 1970s called the “Attic Series” refers to his experience of confinement in an attic during the war. Strange puffy figures with no features, against a dark background or in cubicles are immobilized in the spaces. If we jump forward to the 1990s another approach entirely emerges, with outlines dominating a quirky hard-to-decipher iconography. One is Red Bird/Face , and indeed we do see that, but what it means is another story. A huge bird with an odd shaped head and wings seems to be standing on the head of a man in profile with a large nose. “War Series” continues the outlined style with again a strange surrealistic juxtaposition of a bird, a face, a submarine, or the Red Cross. Also, in the early 1990s Kunst created a series of paintings, several of them self-portraits. These painful images, especially the Artist as a Young Man , with its jagged red cheek that spills into space, gives us a direct expression of Kunst’s experience during the war: it is intensely sad. The artist has stated “The war affected my whole life. You never get rid of it. You live it every day. I must use my art to express my feelings and deep compassion to humankind.” The disconnectedness of Kunst’s various styles as well as his imagery does indeed suggest the traumas of a wartime, when nothing feels safe. Kunst’s work is deeply felt and highly original. Although the work is no longer on display, you can get a catalog from the Center on Contemporary Art. It is a timely exhibition that brings home what is happening in so many places today. Alice Dubiel’s “Landscape Tales” presents entirely different challenges, although equally difficult to summarize in a sentence. Hung in a dark café, which somehow seems appropriate to the exhibition, are large maps of cities, like Seattle or London. Above the maps are reproductions of 19th century landscape paintings with elaborate frames. Interspersed between these are quotes from many sources about landscape and its relationship to colonialism, exploitation and what Raymond Williams called “agrarian bourgeois art.” So, the urban maps show us end point of this landscape control in which nature has been entirely subsumed. The distance between the fantasy made reality in nineteenth century landscape paintings and our contemporary cities, both of which exclude humans even as they display human control, is not as far as we think. Look at the map of Paris for example, in which the only natural element is the river, barely surviving through the city’s bridges and streets. Of course, one thinks of Frederick Law Olmsted who brought the bucolic landscape into the center of the city, but he does not figure in this work. There is no compromise between the imagery of 19th century landscape control and the twentieth century cities in which we impose our grids without thought of nature. The many quotes that Dubiel has provided speak to some of these contradictions ranging from Shakespeare “Are not these woods more free from Peril than the envious court,” Jane Austen speaking of “improving land,” to Edward Said: “The actual geographical possession of land is what Empire in the final analysis is all about.” Both Johannes Kunst and Alice Dubiel address the threats to our lives as we continue to wage war and destroy the land in the name of development. Their work seeks to help us rethink our actions. ~Susan Platt, PhD www.artandpoliticsnow.com

Frink Park 9: William Cumming, Part 2 I became interested in the artist William Cumming last year, when I attended a “town hall” put on by our three 37th District legislative representatives. I went there to buttonhole them about my opposition to some pro-nuclear power bills making their way through the legislature. I accomplished that with fairly good results, I thought at the time. Unfortunately, during this year’s session, all three of the representatives voted in favor of nuclear power when it came before them. I sat down before the proceedings began. Next to me was Ted Kadet, a few years older than me but looking none the worse for wear. We fell into an easy conversation, and before long it emerged that he was an optometrist. In his later years, William Cumming ended up back in Leschi, where he had lived earlier. My newfound friend told me that Cumming regularly took walks in Frink Park and stopped to sketch people who lingered or passed by. He was so poor that he didn’t always have his own paper to draw on, Ted told me; sometimes he sketched on a newspaper that had been left behind. There is corroboration: in the early 1960s he drew on pages of a German medical textbook. Dr. Kadet himself had a Leschi connection. Many years ago he had been married to a daughter of Herb Schneider, an early president of the Leschi Improvement Council (now the LCC). In the middle 1970s, Cumming’s eyes needed attention, but he couldn’t afford care (or hardly anything else), so a deal was arranged: he traded some drawings for the eye-doctor Kadet’s services. As for the earlier sketches from Frink Park, Cumming would often bring them to Leschi resident Art Mink, who years later was the editor of this publication (and I was his copy editor for a while). Mink gave a dollar or two for each drawing – enough for Cumming to get something to eat. Cumming made similar exchanges with other comrades from his former Communist Party days who lived in and around Leschi. Now their offspring have those drawings, and I have been fortunate to track them down among several of the next-generation people I know. In that period, Cumming described his art, and that of his Northwest compatriots, as manifesting austerity and thoughtfulness, representing “the texture and form of our land.” Cumming often drew his subjects without facial features, or even without their faces showing at all, as in the example above. He suggested that people can be recognized at a distance by their posture and gait, and thus, to an artist at least, facial recognition is less significant to capturing a person’s identity. He also felt, during the period of McCarthyism and its aftermath, that it was prudent to avoid identifying people directly, lest they become subjects of anti-communist persecution. In 2005, an exhibition of Cumming’s work was presented at the Frye Art Museum. It was organized and curated by Seattle art critic Matthew Kangas, who also published a book to accompany the show. Cumming survived his earlier health difficulties by many years, dying in 2010, at the age of 93. Thanks to Ted Kadet and members of the Mink, Schneider, Castle, and Sussman families for their support and assistance, and for providing a look at several of Cumming’s unpublished works, including those shown here. Thanks also to Matthew Kangas, author of “William Cumming: The Image of Consequence,” University of Washington Press, 2005. This article concludes the series on Frink Park. ~Roger Lippman The author writes monthly about Leschi history and his experiences over his 48 years in the neighborhood.

We were not sure if we would find community or conflict as we headed down the hill to the BluWater Bistro on Tuesday, September 10 to watch the presidential debate. The place was buzzing when we arrived, and we got seats near the fire, fortifying ourselves by ordering cider, beer and what proved to be very tasty street salmon tacos. There were at least 12 TVs set up throughout the bar and restaurant, all tuned to CNN and fortunately sporting closed captions. The ethnically, though not as it turns out politically, diverse crowd of around 100 strong had clearly come to eat, drink, and tune in. (Well, except for the 8-year-old who had come to celebrate her birthday with family, but her group chose to sit outside under heaters and were gifted desserts.) Bart Evans, owner of the BluWater, has been hosting presidential debates at the bistro since 2016. He said that at the last debate (Biden v. Trump) the air quickly left the room. This Tuesday night was different. The first roars and applause broke out when Democratic candidate Kamala Harris insisted, “The government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.” Loud guffaws echoed when former president Donald Trump claimed [CHOP] protesters took over a big percentage of Seattle. More roars and applause when Harris pointedly told Trump that Putin would “eat you for lunch!” The crowd, it turned out, was indeed partisan and the waves and thumbs up as folks prepared to leave showed who they thought had won the evening. In the words of our waiter, who whispered to us as we settled the tab, “She kicked his ass tonight.” ~Anne Depue [This is a resident’s experience. The Leschi Community Council does not endorse candidates.]

Please join us for our election forum to get up close and personal with the two candidates for position 8, Tanya Woo and Alexis Mercedes-Rinck. Whoever wins the seat will have significant influence on the policies, laws, and funding mechanisms that make our city work (or not, depending on your perspective). Please email us any topics or questions you would like the candidates to address to leschicouncil@gmail.com . The format of the discussion with the candidates will be that of a debate, with time-limited statements, answers and rebuttals from each candidate. We will have prepared questions, based on what we hear from the community. To the extent possible we will entertain questions from the floor. Additionally, we will discuss with a representative of the city what's behind the $1.5 billion Seattle Transportation Levy that will be on the ballot. What is it funding over the coming 8 years, what types of projects are earmarked, which projects may affect Leschi residents? You can find out more about the levy at seattle.gov/transportation/about-us/funding/levy-proposal . Send us your questions to leschicouncil@gmail.com . The meeting will be held in our usual space at Grace United Methodist Church at 722 30th Ave S. Bring your neighbors! Doors open at 6:30pm, snacks and bottled water will be provided. The meeting date has been changed from the usual first Wednesday to meet the needs of the candidates.

The high point of the summer for me was the Lillian Pitt exhibition “Celestial Ancestors” at the Stonington Gallery (125 South Jackson St–August 2024). I have known Lillian for many years, since way back when she visited Washington State University while I was teaching there in the mid-1980s. I bought a pair of her earrings that I still cherish! Along the years I have acquired prints, a Stick mask in ceramic, and a small standing Shadow Spirit in ceramic. I first wrote about her when she had a major exhibition at the Warm Springs Museum  in 1999, an article published in  Art Papers Magazine  and my book, Art and Politics Now . Pitt has created many series of works. In “Celestial Ancestors,” she introduces the Star People: In Native American legends, the Star People are often associated with advanced knowledge, spiritual insight, and the ability to traverse space and time. They are seen as benevolent helpers whose wisdom has been passed down from generation to generation. In some traditions, the Star People are revered as ancestors. In others, they are regarded as beings who came to Earth to teach humans essential skills of sustenance, such as planting and healing. Alternatively, they may be seen as guides who assist individuals in finding their way home. These stories hold a special place in my heart, and it brings me great comfort to have a skilled sculptor, Ben Dye, bring my version of the Star People to life. ~ Lillian Pitt As we enter the gallery, we immediately encounter a large red glass mask of the iconic Tsagaglal (“she who watches”) who benevolently presides over all of the star people. Tsagaglal is an actual petroglyph on the Columbia River and has been Lillian Pitt’s lodestar for decades. Behind her, six feet tall painted steel sculptures of Star People based on  outlines and patterns, rather than a solid form,  lead us through the exhibition with titles like Pondering his Direction and Protected from the Dawn . On the back wall hangs a smaller Tsagaglal. Facing walls include clusters of other Star People, each one offering us a different mood through a specific title.   Many are painted on fragments of wood, a new material for  Pitt with the color alone suggesting the title. For example, Star Person After Visiting Hawaii’s Hot Spots , has some pink striations; Star Person Fully Dressed for the Big Dance  suggests an elegant outfit with an edge of bark as a wrap! They are almost miraculous, I felt guided and comforted as I looked at them. There is both humor and reverence in these works. The exhibition also includes some of her jewelry in various media, including jasmine rings and silver earrings, blown glass with embedded imagery, and a large Spirit Watcher , with huge feathers surrounding his head, and a painted raku face. He reminds me of the great headdresses worn by youth at a recent Powwow here. Stick Indians have been a subject for Pitt for many years and this large figure seems to be the grandfather all those smaller Stick Indian masks, much larger and more dominating. One of the wonders of Lillian Pitt’s work is that she is constantly evolving with new media and subjects, even as all of her work is unified by her particular view of the world.  Barry Lopez expressed it beautifully in the catalog of her exhibition Spirits Keep Whistling Me Home  (1999): One of the hardest things to hold together in modern American culture–a rice paper house in a hurricane–is a community founded in memory, in imagination, in moral relations with the land. Lillian’s Pitt’s work tells us at least one woman among us won’t quit. She hasn’t given up, And so each of us gazing at her work has a place in the community of which she is a working part We’re standing together because of Lillian. ~Susan Platt, PhD www.artandpoliticsnow.com