Artist Spotlight Interview: Jamie Nakagawa Boley

Erin Schalk (ES): Please share with us how you came to be a visual artist:

Jamie Nakagawa Boley (JNB): It started when I was a child. [I experienced] anxiety, and I would have a hard time focusing.

When I would make art in school, for example a drawing or an art project, they seemed to shine. I seemed to notice things like shadows or light – they stood out. Also, certain moments came to my memory. But then with other things, my memory is just gone, [those] would just dissipate.

Also, I was a really good reader. Reading saved me. I couldn’t stop. I would just read and read. My sister and I shared a room, and she said it was very irritating because my books went all the way to the ceiling! My parents made a whole wall into a bookshelf for me. 

I think in the process of reading, you enter that world of imagination, you go into those places, and you travel all over the world. Writers take you to all of these different places. Likewise, I am an artist that has lots of ideas. You know how we’re taught as artists if you can imagine it, you can create it? 

In my twenties, I was told, “Oh, Jamie, you have so many ideas…press down your ideas.” I tried to stop reading, I tried to be an “adult” and not escape, tried to “grow up.” But, I realize something now: those ideas and being an artist is something exciting. The idea that you can imagine something and you can actually create it is very liberating. Reading was really that ticket into another world, and art was the medium for me.

ES: In recent years, your creative work has expanded; you are a visual artist as well an emerging curator. Tell us more about your curatorial practice.

JNB: When I was at a masters graduate program at Fresno State, I had curated a show with James Luna, a Native American artist from California. One of my first classes at Fresno was a theory class, and we looked at Luna’s Artifact Piece. My minor is in Native American Indian studies, and I am Choctaw and Chickasaw through my grandmother. I am Japanese-American and European also. I was immediately able to understand [Artifact Piece] because I knew the language, I could read it, I knew what he was doing and what he was saying.

[Fresno State] is a small graduate program, and I was looking at Chicago Art Institute and watching what they were doing, and they were bringing in guest artists. So, I very naively contacted [Luna] and asked him to come to my school. And he did! 

I curated a show and brought this incredible artist–James Luna–and he was amazing. I invited another graduate student to help me who is very talented, and so we curated a show with James Luna. That was my first introduction to curating shows.

Currently, I am an adjunct professor at Fresno State University, and I was also approached by Clovis Community College. [At Clovis], there was an opportunity to curate shows, so I walked into it and started curating. 

I believe in the platform of the arts. I believe that we, as a culture, are primed for the arts. That the arts are a perfect space. Why not utilize the arts in a way that can be inviting to these students, to the faculty, and to the community where I live? 

I think as an instructor, we are always curating. When we’re bringing artists and introducing them into our courses. I think of that as curating. When you’re planning your classes – whether it’s art history, even studio – and you’re talking to your students and introducing them to these artists, you are curating.

The premise behind it: sometimes we wait, and we only introduce artists that are [a part of] art history. But, rather than wait for art history to choose, I want to choose the artists. Why do we always have to wait for art history to say who is a great artist? 

ES: Please share more with us about your visual artwork. What are some of the media, ideas, content, and history that inform your work?

JNB: I’ll start with Minnie Ektah Ooweh, which I’ve only shown three times.

[Minnie Ektah Ooweh], translated “Come to the Water,” was always meant to be broken apart, because it’s sixteen feet long and eight feet tall. 

It’s four panels, and there’s meant to be a gap between them. I usually like gaps between the panels, and there’s a reason why: it’s almost to breathe, for my work to breathe. And, I like the image to fall apart. So, these are two important things for me in my work.

Originally, this piece was a diptych. It was four feet by eight feet, and I would make it bigger, and I turned it into [a piece] that was sixteen feet long.

From my statement about the work:

“[Minnie Ektah Ooweh] was one of my earlier paintings, and I found myself in search of understanding as to how land and memory came into meaning. 

When my father died, I found myself seeking solace in the land where my eyes could find rest. I’ll never forget driving with the intent to see him one last time, being so overcome with sorrow, that I was unable to speak. Looking out the car window, I looked out into the farmland, and suddenly a field with blue-black soil under gray skies caught my gaze. It was so un-extraordinary, and maybe to some, mundane and forgettable, but to me, it was the most beautiful thing. The skies were gray above an empty, desolate field of deep blue-black soil with a small area of water running between it, and wild brush growing alongside it. This painting, and my previous painting, found a way from that memory. I don’t really like how static and heavy it is, and if not for the gap between the panels, I would feel as if I could not breathe.

And strangely, every time I look at this painting, a deep longing and sorrow comes over me. And, so maybe I just don’t like what was caught in the pigment, as a reminder of missed moments and life’s regrets. 

Moving to Minnie Ocouojou, the Lakota translation is “Planters by the Water.” [This was]  painted in an attempt to ease out of the heaviness of my first painting. But instead, it became even bigger and more expansive. 

Mixed media works on paper and wood panels, time-based media land works investigating reality impacted by ideologies immersed in colonialism, racism, imperialism, and there in the works, between the pages, along the margins, through lives seemingly lost in a reflection of history as in fragments, ruins, and uncertainty thus revealed.”

ES: Is there another of your artworks you’d like to share with us?

JNB: I’ll discuss Standing in the Gap. It’s oil on wood panel, and I painted it in 2017. 

[Standing in the Gap depicts] the St. John’s river that’s full to the very brim, due to the recent flooding in Fresno and the California Central Valley.

I went back to school later in life. My daughter was struggling, and we had her children and were taking care of them. It was really hard to go to school and take care of the kids. I was having so much anxiety. I would cry, and I would pray.

The [St. John’s river] is only about fifteen minutes away from my home. I’d get to about this spot, and I would be praying. By the time I got here, I would have this peace. 

In the Central Valley, there’s an agricultural area. We’re actually above a huge aquifer of water that runs underneath us. When they created these dams, they drained the lake, so now we have these rivers that run through, and this is one of them. Usually it’s dry most of the time. We’ve been in this drought for several years, and I’ve been documenting that drought. I was probably documenting that drought before we even knew there was a drought! 

The farmers left these [waterways] alone because you can see the natural vegetation that grows, and you can see these little trees that will grow along. This [painting depicts one of these waterways], and they’re really beautiful.

I used to think, “Is that just art history that clings to me? Western history?” And I would see [the water], and it would just give me some peace. Eventually, I would investigate and realize that’s the St. John’s river. Once a year, there would be an overflow, and you would see the water. Through the years I was going to graduate school, I would come across this. 

I would come closer and closer to this water. Eventually, I’d get permission and climb into that land. I started to walk the land, and I have it documented. When I was going to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, my final thesis was on me walking that land. 

But, those little birds – they are everyone in my family. I didn’t do that consciously, but I realized when I finished painting, that is the exact amount of my whole family, my children, my childrens’ children, my husband, and me. And there we are, we’re staked on that one little fence.

Most of my work is the land, and most of my work has water in it. Strangely enough, my name is Jamie Nakagawa Boley, and “Nakagawa” means “middle river” [in Japanese]. The water is very symbolic to me. To me, an essence to it about God. It’s very spiritual for me.

There’s a poem I wrote for this piece:

My fears fall away

no longer encompassing me in a land of need.

In a place where the waters flood my soul…

again and again, I cry out to God.

We are ten small birds waiting,

now freed from the snares of this life. 

Selah

ES: Speaking of poems, how does writing inform your creative practice? Also, how does installation integrate into your work?

JNB: I think that the writing helps me a lot, actually. It helps my installation and gives me quite a bit of direction. It’s really a mapping. 

My Japanese grandfather was a farmer and a writer, and I have a lot of farming in my blood. He went to the University of Hawai’i and became a farmer in Kona. He was also a poet and wrote haiku. So, [the writing is] there inside me. That love of the land is there inside me from both sides. My mother loves the land also.

Someone asked me if I thought this fascination I have with the land could sustain me. It caused me to pause, but I believe it will, because I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. 

In terms of installation with my work, I created a piece called Winyan Omnicha, the “Gathering of the Women.” This was part of my graduate thesis at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was also part of a beautiful show with Joy Harjo [the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States]. Her poetry was all over the walls, so it was really an honor to be in this show. 

The title of the show was All Words Have Roots. It was interesting, because I brought in tree roots! So, I got a kick out of it–that my tree roots, I dragged to Chicago–were in there, and I love those tree roots.

[The tree roots are] a metaphor of this unhealthy culture entrapped in warped and twisted roots, development disrupted by the hard-pan soil of a hidden history of violence, greed, and sorrow. Sometimes, as the wise farmer told me, the orchard must be removed, and all its trees and roots ripped out. Only then can the fallow ground be broken.

Ultimately, I am very fascinated with the hidden history, and the history that always happened alongside the history that was told. It was always here.