On the streets of Inwood, a canvas featuring an image of Jackson Pollock came and went.

INWOOD has long been a neighborhood of Broadway musicians and opera singers who practice inside and outside their apartments, then ride the A train downtown to musicals and cabaret shows, dressed in black evening wear, instruments in tow. Late at night they return to the quiet streets of this neighborhood in northern Manhattan, seemingly the exclusive province of musical artists.

That changed a few months ago when a mysterious artwork appeared on the stoop of a boarded-up brick building on West 215th Street and Park Terrace East. Nestled in a doorway of the building, which once housed a girls’ school, stood a 5-by-8-foot canvas plastered with a photocopy of a photograph showing Jackson Pollock splattering paint. The copy in turn was overlaid on pages from a book of complex mathematical equations. In one corner an inscription read: “Intersections and Decomposition for Planar Arrangements.”

The display, titled “Pollock Equation,” was erected in February by Mike Saijo, a 32-year-old mixed-media artist. After moving to the neighborhood from Los Angeles in 2005, he had been trying in vain to bond with artists whose work was shown at a gallery on West 207th Street. Inwood doesn’t have many galleries.

“There was the weekend water colorist, the guy who took an art class in college and hadn’t made art in three years,” he said. “Nobody had the same kind of commitment.”

Mr. Saijo saw his display as a sort of rallying cry. As he wrote in an e-mail message explaining his intentions: “Art is a very important part of a healthy community. It can generate energy and vitality by transforming common everyday spaces and enhancing everyday experiences in a small way, sending ripples in a small pond.”

Ripples it sent, and spontaneous pieces of art have begun popping up ever since. At one end of Park Terrace East, bronze Buddhist prayer bells appeared nailed to a brick building, just out of reach from the street. At the other end of Park Terrace East, there appeared, at changing locations, a coffee mug adorned with elaborately drawn flowers that mirrored the blooming garden in Isham Park at the end of the block.

Mr. Saijo’s canvas disappeared a few weeks ago, apparently stolen. In its place he put up a poster advertising an exhibition of his work this month in the East Village.

In a few weeks, Mr. Saijo will be moving to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but his poster remains on the doorway in Inwood below a jutting iron nail, waiting to be adorned.

By CARLA ZANONI
Published: August 19, 2007

New York Magazine
The Mathematics of Jackson Pollock on a Street Corner in Inwood

In an impressive display of academic vandalism, uptown artist Mike Saijo created his bigger-than-life piece Pollock Equation from pages torn from an advanced mathematics textbook, atop which Saijo printed a photo of Jackson Pollock in all his wily glory. Saijo, an Inwood resident, leaned his work against the doorway of an abandoned school building on Park Terrace East, not to avoid the Soho street-art clutter but because he wanted something to look at on his way out his front door. The piece made it through the winter and spring before being swiped last month, but, as of Wednesday, a selection of Saijo’s work will be up at the Tompkins Square Library through August 22.

By RACHEL WOLFF
Published: August 6, 2007

Tompkins Square Library Art Gallery
Corpus Xeroxysm 3


Emerging artist and curator at 207 gallery, Mike Saijo’s debut solo-exhibition in NYC entitled Corpus Xeroxysm 3, is part of an ongoing epic project of deconstructing literature currently on view at Tompkins Square Library Art Gallery. Themes in this exhibition include: Psycho-history of the New World, Imaginary Science, and the Body inspired by Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Claude Levi-Strauss, Charles Darwin, and composer Richard Wagner. The works on exhibit were originally intended to be exhibited for a solo exhibition at Columbia University Medical Center on June 2007, but was canceled few days before the opening reception due to the content of the work. The exhibition includes large-scale work consisting of pages from discarded books and an xerox print process which layers images over the text.

Opening Reception Wed.August 8, 2007 6-8p
Music and Sound Performance featuring: Jay Why, The Blisstones, and Ryan Tkac. Wed. August 15, 2007 6-8p
Closing Reception, screening of short films and video art Wed.August 22, 2007 6-8p

Directions: L traIn walk towards Ave B.Tompkins Square Library 331 E.10th St. New York, NY 10009 212-228-4747

Contact: Mike Saijo, www.msaijo.com
manatee1000@hotmail.com
718.839.0025

Laura Fay Lewis, representative lafabliss@hotmail.com 646. 279.0831

Cal State Fullerton Arboretum
Sowing Dreams, Cultivating Lives: Nikkei Farmers in Pre-World War II Orange County

New Exhibit to Open at Nikkei Heritage Museum in Fullerton

New exhibit capturing the pre-war history of OC Nikkei farmers will open Saturday at Cal State Fullerton.

The first Nikkei community in Orange County was established around the 1900's by Japanese farmers who emigrated from Japan with hope of building better lives. However, their journey to a new land wasn't so easy; rather it was a constant struggle of adapting into a new society where they experienced difficult living conditions, prejudice and wartime incarceration.

The stories of these early immigrants will be captured through a new exhibition, "Sowing: Dreams, Cultivating Lives: Nikkei Farmers in Pre-World War II Orange County" starting Feb. 10 through July 29 at the Orange County Agricultural and Nikkei Heritage Museum at the Fullerton Arboretum, California State University, Fullerton. The opening ceremony is scheduled on this Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

The exhibition will feature the lives of Orange County's Japanese American farmers from their first arrival in the 1900's until their relocation and internment in the spring of 1942. The exhibition's floor is divided into sections covering immigration, family life, community, social organizations and farming.

"Some of the interesting things (about the exhibition) are the details that involve personal stories," said Stephanie George, collections curator for the university's Center for Oral & Public History. "You are going to have a glance into their lives; what they did in their free time, how they felt about themselves, what was important in their farmland, and the values that have passed down to their children. Then we also discuss some of the larger issues of what people did with their farms and equipment (during their incarceration), and how did they go about trying to restructure their lives in a very short period of time."

The exhibition will also feature a seven-feet-tall, 10-feet-wide artwork by New York artist Mike Saijo. His work, based on local photographs and writings in "Echo" from the pre-war period, will measure and reflect the sense of community spirit of the Japanese American farmers. "It's a contemporary piece of art that reflects another generation," George said. "It brings together all those areas of farming, community, family, working on the earth and mental and spiritual sides."

One of the purposes of this exhibition, she said, is to introduce a space where visitors can experience in so many different levels; not only by visual but also by audio and sense. In the children's area, children can learn about farming by touching different kinds of artificial vegetables and harvesting them at a vegetable garden. At the family section, visitors will step into a pre-war dining and kitchen setting where an antiquated radio is playing weather reports. At the last section of the exhibit, a flat-screen television and slide shows will introduce visitors "Uprooting Lives" of the Nikkei farmers when they were sent to internment camps during World War II. Research for the exhibition was started by collecting oral histories and photographs held at the Center for Oral and Public History, George said. "There was a Japanese American oral history project started in the 70's. We went through all kinds of primary documents, newspapers, and government records like U.S. Census. They have all kinds of agricultural information and population records," she said.

And then, they approached some of the Japanese American farmers to collect their personal stories. "We've been really just delighted that there have been a lot of Japanese Americans who come in and offered their help," she said. "I think the words are kind of spreading that people stop by and offer their ideas, so it really expands our education as well." One of these community supporters, George Kato, a member of the Nikkei Community Volunteer Committee, points out the significance of preserving the Japanese American agricultural history. "I believe many people are interested in the original group of Japanese immigrants who started agriculture in Orange County," he said. "During the late 1920's to 1930's, it was a very difficult period for them to start the business here, but because of their effort, Orange County agriculture as a whole made tremendous contribution in the pre-war period."

The Nikkei Community Volunteer Committee, which founded by the late Clarence Nishizu, has helped the university by organizing the fundraising for the museum building project. Nishizu passed away Jan. 25, 2006 before reaching the goal amount of $750,000, which has reached by the end of the year. "While he was alive he wanted to reach the goal, but then he died before that. And by realizing that that was his last dream, Clarence's brother John Nishizu and family took it up on by themselves to come up with the amount from their family trust. So we are very happy about Clarence who's no longer here with us but in heaven he knows his goal has been reached," Kato said.

Orange County Agricultural and Nikkei Heritage Museum, 1900 Associated Rd., Fullerton, opens Saturdays and Sundays from 12 to 4 p.m. by appointment. Admission is free. For more information call the museum at (714) 278-3407 or visit www.arboretum.fullerton.edu

By MICHIKO TAMURA
Rafu Shimpo
Published: February 10, 2007

The Book LA
Mike Saijo - 90

Mike Saijo with Red Army on his shoulders. Photo by Odessy Barbu

Mike Saijo likes to read, and once he's read a book, he likes to take it apart page by page. It is difficult to gauge the scale of these works from the photographs, but his canvases are made up of entire books, their pages laid end to end. He then overlays them with created or found images, sometimes literally, the satellite map that makes up the work, "Rashomon" was left behind in a copy machine at Kinko's. Some works incorporate his own illustrations, but most do not. "There are so many different images in the world already that I don't find a reason to make more. I try different images and see how the meaning changes. After selecting the image, I feed the pages into the copy machine xeroxing the images directly onto the pages."

He invented this method out of high school, left it behind after one work, and then came back to it after several years, and has not looked back. He picks up second hand books for a dollar or two, reads them, and having absorbed them, reimagines and transforms them into something altogether new. There is both synchronicity and tension between the images and the words underneath.

Books as objects tend to be fetishized, even if they are never read. They are not to be tampered with. There is an element of transgression to Saijo's work. His own mother objected. "Doing something like this is definitely not encouraged in Japanese culture." But he admits that there are elements of both destruction and preservation, desecration and consecration, reduction and expansion in his work. "I don't believe in a lot of what I've read and been taught. I'm interested in how power systems are established through language, and how both language and images are misused."

His first work of this kind, "Soldier" is made up of a second world war military issued New Testament. The works lead the viewer to randomly pluck out bits of text, for a sort of self-created collage. The words that fall under my eye, by the soldier's right hand are: " this is my body which is given for you. This do in remembrance of me." Saijo says, "It's a different experience from opening up a book and flipping through the pages. You see it all at once. It has a different effect for each viewer and each viewer is drawn to a different piece.

The work is as cerebral as it is sensual. It gives rise to thoughts on manipulation of words and language. Language demoted from their rightful place and used as decoration or backdrop. For example, "Metamorphoses in Landscape," uses Ovid's Metamorphoses. The treatment of the paper renders the pages transparent so you can see both sides of the page at once, the opposite side in mirror image.

After viewing Mike Saijo's disorienting and provocative juxtapositions at his studio one evening, it seemed almost fitting to be driving home in the rain and finding ourselves behind a beat up pickup truck, with what turned out to be a full-grown tiger in the back.

By Mia Taylor
The Book LA
Published: Spring 2005