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Roy Kenzie Kiyooka CM RCA (January 18, 1926 – January 8, 1994) was a Canadian painter, poet, photographer, arts teacher.[1]
Roy Kiyooka | |
|---|---|
| Born | Roy Kenzie Kiyooka January 18, 1926 Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada |
| Died | January 8, 1994 (aged 67) Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Awards | Order of Canada Silver Medal at the Eighth Sao Paulo Biennial |
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. [citation needed] 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]
- 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.
Roy Kiyooka: Accidental Tourist (Doris McCarthy Gallery, Scarborough, Ont), 17–22 March 2005.[9][10]
Roy K. Kiyooka: 25 Years (Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC), 21 November-16 December 1976.[11]
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