Roy Kiyooka
Born
Roy Kenzie Kiyooka

(1926-01-18)January 18, 1926
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada
DiedJanuary 8, 1994(1994-01-08) (aged 67)
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
AwardsOrder of Canada
Silver Medal at the Eighth Sao Paulo Biennial

Roy Kenzie Kiyooka CM RCA (January 18, 1926 – January 8, 1994) was a Canadian painter, poet, photographer, arts teacher.[1]

Biography

A Nisei, or a second generation Japanese Canadian, Roy Kenzie Kiyooka was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and raised in Calgary, Alberta.[1] His parents were Harry Shigekiyo Kiyooka[2] and Mary Kiyoshi Kiyooka.[3] Roy's grandfather on the maternal side, a samurai Ōe Masamichi, was the 17th headmaster of the Musō Jikiden Eishin-ryū school of swordsmanship.[3] Roy Kiyooka's brother Harry Mitsuo Kiyooka also became an abstract painter, a professor of art,[1] and sometimes a curator of his brother's work. Roy's youngest brother Frank Kiyooka became a potter.[2]

In 1942, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the family moved to Opal, Alberta.[2]

From 1946 to 1949, Kiyooka studied with at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art.[2] In 1955, he studied at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende.[1] From 1957 to 1959, Kiyooka took part in the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops of the University of Saskatchewan,[1][4] where he worked with famed art American critic Clement Greenberg and abstract expressionist painter Barnett Newman.[5]

In 1956, Kiyooka began teaching at the Regina College of Art.[1] He moved to Vancouver in 1959, and began to shift his practice away from painting and towards photography and eventually filmmaking.[5] In 1971-1972 he taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax; he documented his trip across the country to Halifax in the work Long Beach BC to Peggy’s Cove Nova Scotia, which formed part of his 1975 Transcanada Letters.[5] From 1973 to 1991, he also taught at the Fine Arts Department of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.[2]

Kiyooka used the ellipse form in the Art Gallery of Ontario's Barometer No. 2 (1964).[6] In 1965, he represented Canada at the Eighth Sao Paulo Biennial.[7] In 1969, he created the sculpture, Abu Ben Adam’s Vinyl Dream, for the Canadian pavilion at Expo ‘70 in Osaka, Japan.[2] In 1975, the Vancouver Art Gallery organized a twenty-five-year retrospective of his work.[2] That same year saw Kiyooka publish his Transcanada Letters, a book project which weaved together photography, his own letters and experimental writing to examine his experience of the nation as a second-generation Japanese-Canadian.[5] In 1978, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada.[7] Kiyooka’s Pear Tree Pomes, illustrated by David Bolduc (Coach House Press, 1987), was nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award.[7]

While in Japan, he made the StoneDGloves: Alms for Soft Palms photographic series, shown at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. He also made16 Cedar Laminated Sculpture series, shown alongside the Ottoman/Court Suite of silk-screen prints, at the Bau Xi Gallery in Vancouver in May 1971.[2]

Books

  • Kyoto Airs. designed and printed by Takao Tanabe at Periwinkle Press, Vancouver 1964. (Inspired by a visit to Japan in 1963).[1]
  • Dorothy Livesay: The Unquiet Bed. Illustrations by Roy Kiyooka.
  • Nevertheless These Eyes. Printed at the Coach House Press, Toronto 1967.[1]
  • The Fountainebleau Dream Machine: 18 Frames from A Book of Rhetorick. Coach House Press, Toronto 1977
  • “Wheels, a trip thru Honshu’s Backcountry” was published by Coach House Press, Toronto 1981.
  • StoneDGloves. Coach House Press, Toronto 1970. Repr.: 1983.[8]
  • transcanada letters. Talonbooks, Vancouver 1975. Repr.: 2004.
  • Pear Tree Pomes 1987. Illus. by David Bolduc. Coach House Press, Toronto 1987. Nominated for the 1987 Governor General Award.

Books published posthumously include:

  • Daphne Marlatt (ed.): Mothertalk: Life Stories of Mary Kiyoshi Kiyooka. NeWest Press, Edmonton 1997. Roy Kiyooka's mother, Mary Kiyoshi Kiyooka's, story from a series of interviews by Matsuki Masutani and reworked by Roy Kiyooka.[2]
  • Roy Miki (ed.): Pacific Windows: Collected Poems of Roy K. Kiyooka. Talonbooks, Burnaby, B.C. 1997.
  • Smaro Kambourelli (ed.): Pacific Rim Letters. NeWest Press, Edmonton 2004.
  • Roy Miki (ed.): Roy Kiyooka: The Artist & the Moose: A Fable of Forget. LINEbooks, Burnaby, B.C., 2009.

Exhibitions

Roy Kiyooka: Accidental Tourist (Doris McCarthy Gallery, Scarborough, Ont), 17–22 March 2005.[9][10]

Awards

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 MacDonald 1991, p. n.p..
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Kiyooka, Fumiko. ""a brief history of roy kiyooka, 20 years after his death in 1994". remembering roy kiyooka 1926-1994". jccabulletin-geppo.ca. Canadian Nikkei: Online home of The Bulletin - Journal of Japanese Canadian Community, History & Culture. January 2008. Retrieved April 4, 2021.
  3. 1 2 Greenaway, John Endo (February 7, 2014). "Remembering Roy Kiyooka: 1926 – 1994, Canadian Nikkei: Online home of The Bulletin - Journal of Japanese Canadian Community, History & Culture. January 2008".
  4. ↑ Henderson, Lee (September 28, 2023). "The Legacy of Saskatchewan's Most Controversial—and Impactful—Artist Program". The Walrus. Retrieved October 2, 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Bassnett, Sarah; Parsons, Sarah (2023). Photography in Canada, 1839–1989: An Illustrated History. Toronto: Art Canada Institute. ISBN 978-1-4871-0309-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. ↑ Bradfield, Helen (1970). Art Gallery of Ontario: the Canadian Collection. Toronto: McGraw Hill. ISBN 0070925046. Retrieved April 2, 2021.
  7. 1 2 3 Leclerc, Denise (June 8, 2010). "Roy Kiyooka". The Canadian Encyclopedia (online ed.). Historica Canada.
  8. ↑ "Roy Kiyooka". www.gallery.ca. National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
  9. ↑ Milroy, Sarah (May 19, 2005). "Roy Kiyooka's palpable sense of place". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved October 5, 2017.
  10. ↑ "Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival". scotiabankcontactphoto.com. 2005. Archived from the original on October 6, 2017. Retrieved October 5, 2017.
  11. ↑ "Prizes". Canada Council. Retrieved August 15, 2022.

Bibliography

  • Kent Lewis: Kiyooka, Roy Kenzie. In: William H. New (editor): The Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2002, p. 582f
  • MacDonald, Colin S. (1991). A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, vol. 3 (Third ed.). Ottawa: Canadian Paperbacks Publishing. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
  • National Film Board of Canada. B.C. Almanac(h) C-B. Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery, Reprint edition, 2015 (1970). ISBN 9780920293973 OCLC 1031772338
  • John O'Brian, Naomi Sawada, Scott Watson (ed.): All Amazed: For Roy Kiyooka. Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver, B.C., with Belkin Gallery, 2002
  • Michael Ondaatje (ed.): "The Long Poem Anthology", 1979
  • Vancouver Art Gallery: Roy K. Kiyooka: 25 Years, 1975
  • Woloshyn, Alexa. “Playing with the Voice and Blurring Boundaries in Hildegard Westerkamp’s “MotherVoiceTalk”.” eContact! 14.4 — TES 2011: Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium / Symposium électroacoustique de Toronto (March 2013). Montréal: CEC.
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