Coffee & Collections: Fumi Matsumoto
On Saturday, Jan. 21 from 10:30 a.m. to noon, local artist Fumi Matsumoto will discuss art and history during the Juneau Douglas City Museum’s “Coffee and Collections.” Matsumoto will begin the presentation by showing the short, award-winning film “Honor & Sacrifice,” which tells the story of her father, Roy Matsumoto, a decorated WWII Nisei veteran who fought in Burma and received the Congressional Gold Medal. After the film, she will discuss her artwork and how it has been influenced by the experiences of her father, other family members, and friends who were forced by the U.S. government to live in Japanese internment camps during WWII because “they looked like the enemy.”
Fumi Matsumoto, who was born in Japan and raised in America, moved to Fairbanks in 1980 and has lived in Juneau since 1990. Her work reflects the experiences and themes of her Japanese ancestry and growing up as an Asian American. Working in mixed media, she incorporates various traditional Japanese techniques into her art, such as origami (paper folding), sumi-e (ink brush painting), and hanga (block printing). Matsumoto uses found objects and re-purposed materials to create her sculptures and “teabag” linoprints, which depict various Alaskan wildlife.
The Juneau-Douglas City Museum has purchased three of Fumi Matsumoto’s pieces from the Museum’s Empty Chair Exhibit, through the generous support of the Rasmuson Foundation’s Art Acquisition Grant; they will be on view in the entryway display case from mid-January until the end of June 2017.
Coffee and Collections with Fumi Matsumoto is a free event, and coffee will be provided courtesy of Heritage Coffee Company. More information about the film can be found at http://www.honordoc.com/.
More information about the City Museum can be found on the museum’s website: http://www.juneau.org/library/museum. The Juneau-Douglas City Museum is located at Fourth & Main Streets, and its phone number is 586-3572. Fall/winter hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Admission is free during the month of January thanks to a donation from Don and Alma Harris.
