My (humble) ART Collection (Selected)
'Two Women', watercolor and collage by James H. 'Jimi' Suzuki, 1979.
While a graduate student at Cal State University, Sacramento, I assisted both Oliver Lee Jackson and Jimi Suzuki, teaching drawing and painting. Near the end of a semester of teaching 'painting' with Jimi, he sat for several sessions applying watercolor, using several of our students as models. Several days later, he returned having added the collage and wax signature stamp and presented it to me. Jimi was a genuine pleasure to work with, quiet and unassuming, always positive and very supportive in my young pup days.
Post War World II, Jimi and three other young art students (including Yoko Ono) were a part of a Japanese delegation that were brought to America for advanced studies. Jimi studied at the Portland School of Fine Arts in Maine, and in 1953 won a scholarship to the Corcoran School of Art, in Washington D.C.
He then moved to New York City, and in 1958 won a Whitney Opportunity Fellowship. That same year, he participated in an important exhibition organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, called "Contemporary Painters of Japanese Origin in America-1958", and exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art. By this time Suzuki had become friends with the Abstract Expressionist artists making waves in the art world - artists such as Kenzo Okada, Kline, de Kooning, Kanemitsu, Hasegawa, and Jackson Pollock.
He moved to the West Coast, Bay Area, started teaching at UC Berkeley with David Hockney, moved on to California College of Arts and Crafts, UC Davis and then accepted an associate professor position at Cal State, Sacramento.
RIP Jimi, 1933-2022.