- I went to California College of Arts and Crafts,
and there a friend took me up to the weaving room.
When I saw the girls weaving and throwing the shuttle,
I was just absolutely fascinated,
and with the last $150 I had, I went out and I bought a loom.
The first pieces I wove were placemats, hand towels,
napkins, utilitarian items.
One day, we had heard there was going to be a fantastic speaker
talking up in Guerneville at Pond Farm.
And she turned out to be Trude Guermonprez.
- Helen Molesworth: Trude Guermonprez's father
taught at Black Mountain,
where she learns to become a weaver.
She then leaves Black Mountain and goes to work
with Marguerite Wildenhain on Pond Farm.
Marguerite Wildenhain had come through Black Mountain
as part of the pottery seminar.
- Kay: Trude was just a fantastic speaker.
She talked about things that teachers around here
never even talked about, and so I just knew
I had to study with her.
Fortunately, in the summer of 1954,
I was able to study with her
at California College of Arts and Crafts, CCAC.
Studying with Trude was extraordinary.
She opened my eyes to what weaving could be.
This is a work of Trude Guermonprez's,
and I kind of love it.
One of the things that she really stressed was that
the warp could be as important as the weft.
In my own work, I tried to do the same.
- Forrest Merrill: Trude Guermonprez inspired Kay
to really move away from utilitarian objects
into art pieces of incredible ingenuity.
There's this marvelous mind and vision that she possesses.
And when Kay looks at something,
you get the idea it's a lesson in how to look
because she really brings a focus that few people have.
She's marvelous that way.
Kay has produced these incredible pieces of jewelry,
paper, and fiber art.
- This is one of my first monofilament hangings.
It comes off the loom flat, and it just opens up
sort of bulbous like this.
- Hi, Forrest. - How are you doing?
- Forrest: For 50 years,
Kay's been recognized throughout the country
as an innovator of taste and style in fiber art.
Here's one of your marriage sets, an unusual one
because the wood is so thick.
- Kay: I used hornet's nest paper for the paper bowl,
and it's so much fun to see it come off the form.
[laughing] - Forrest: This looks all very natural and...
- Kay: Right, I did that on purpose.
- Forrest: And how did you do that?
- Tear the paper.
All the paper was torn rather than cut,
'cause there are no sharp edges.
- Forrest: Bob had to make a special mold for that.
- Yes.
The marriage set was so popular, it kept us busy for years.
- Kay: Bob Stocksdale made molds for me.
He made my card weaving boards.
He put blocks on my 12-harness looms
so that I could reach the treadles with my feet.
He was wonderful for me.
Before we were ever married,
we certainly knew each other by reputation,
but I think the only way that we really worked together
was when we started making these marriage in form bowls.
I would make paper bowls around Bob's bowls.
Bob just had a gift for being able
to see inside a piece of wood, and it was just amazing.
He brought fine woodworking up to the level of art.
I was making a lot of paper bowls and I decided, well,
why not try making a leaf bowl?
I soaked the leaves in this dish pan,
and they're soaked for at least a good half day
until the stem becomes very pliable.
It looks very fragile, but the veins are actually wood,
and so it's pretty sturdy.
I color a piece of very sheer Japanese paper,
and I cut it in the shape of a leaf.
And they're placed on the mold and glued together.
Then I take the leaves that have been soaking
and I just put paste on where the leaf would touch the paper.
And then I just put it on the mold.
I just sort of slap it on and then cover it with Saran wrap,
and then I leave it overnight.
When I come up in the morning,
it would be ready to remove it from the mold.
Bob made me a mold that is called a knockdown mold
so that when the leaves were dry,
I would just turn it over and pull out the center of the mold
and then the sides of the mold,
and I would have a leaf bowl.
[gentle string and guitar music]
After my two summer sessions with Trude, she asked me,
"What are you gonna do next?"
So I thought, "Well, who else could I study with?"
Then I thought about Jack.
Jack Lenor Larsen was-- well, I would say he was like
the golden boy in textiles.
And he was teaching
at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.
So I wrote and I got a scholarship,
and so I found myself at Haystack being Jack's assistant.
- These are small pieces.
This is a Kay Sekimachi.
It's made with nest material, which is a natural paper.
These are Bob Stocksdale,
and this piece is Bob Stocksdale.
I used to teach every summer for 3 weeks at Haystack.
And for many years, my job was to select the faculty.
I chose the best, people like Toshiko Takaezu, Anni Albers.
I invited Dale Chihuly to start glass blowing at Haystack,
and he wanted to start such a school in Seattle.
And so Haystack was the model for Pilchuck.
Haystack became the leader in the craft field.
It was the most beautiful land imaginable,
covered with lichens and mosses.
The feeling when people came to the school
was that we were on a raft and you didn't get off.
And it was perfect.
- Kay: Jack would come in
and he would give us an assignment.
And then he would say, "Kay will help you if you need anything."
And so I was supposed to help the other students.
Jack was a very interesting teacher.
His assignments made you think.
These two pieces are mine,
and I did them in Jack Lenor Larsen's class.
The assignment was to weave emotional stripes,
and we could use as many colors as we want.
And so this was my solution to emotional stripes.
And Jack looked at this and he said,
"Kay, that's the most beautiful emotional stripes
I've ever seen."
And so that really did encourage me,
and I was very pleased to hear that.
Growing up, I was not a good student,
and the only class that I liked was the art classes.
I always loved to draw and paint.
In fact, maybe that was the only thing that I liked to do.
I went to Berkeley public schools,
and we went to a Japanese church
where we studied Japanese and calligraphy.
In all our spare time, we would play with paper dolls,
made stories around them, built houses for them,
and we made hundreds of dresses.
They had opera wear, they had ski clothes,
they had costumes.
I like to say that we were wearing rags,
but my paper dolls were wearing designer clothes. [chuckles]
In 1941, after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor,
all the Japanese were removed from the West Coast.
My mother worked for a family here in Berkeley.
And they said they would keep anything for us
until we got back.
And so the first thing I put in this trunk was my paper dolls.
And that's why we still have them.
In Tanforan, when we got there, nothing was organized.
Well, the first time when we lined up for meals,
carrying our tin dish and a tin cup,
I thought, "Are we going to survive this?"
The schools just didn't get put together.
My younger sister and I had free time,
and so we went out to paint every day.
- Michele Ellis Pracy: Kay Sekimachi is a visionary.
She's made objects that no one else has ever made.
She's used materials in ways
that nobody else has ever used them.
Her workmanship, her craftsmanship,
her concepts are so beautifully, exquisitely rendered,
and we're thrilled that she was given the
Distinguished Woman Artist award from the Fresno Art Museum.
The exhibition will have pieces that have never been seen before
because we're going back so far into her creative life.
- Kay: Michele Ellis Pracy chose what she wanted
from the exhibition and then said
whatever else we think should be in the show, she will accept.
- Michele: Kay has never shown her paper dolls,
and they were really the inception of her life
as an artist.
It's marvelous when we can bring in those pieces
to an exhibition.
Hi, Forrest. - Hi.
- Welcome to the museum.
- Thank you, thank you. - So come on in.
- Kay: Forrest Merrill is being very generous.
Forrest is a very dear friend,
and he has the most in-depth collection of my work of anyone.
I think half the show will be from Forrest's collection.
He's just very, very supportive.
- Forrest: This is one of the earliest pieces
in my collection, and it shows how Kay began
as really a rather traditional weaver
before she studied with Trude Guermonprez.
- Michele: I think that she realized
that her love of weaving meant
that she should be more artful with it
and she began to experiment.
- Forrest: Yes, Kay is considered a fiber artist
when you put a label on her,
but she can really explore the breadth of different materials.
- Michele: Mm-hmm.
This is a necklace? - Yes, this is a necklace.
- I want to wear it. [laughs]
It's beautiful.
There's a community of people who love art
and preserve it and share it with museums.
Forrest is fabulous that way.
Forrest began collecting with very little money
as a very young man.
He knew that his life needed to be filled with art.
- Forrest: I'm not convinced that "collector"
is in all senses of the word a positive word.
I'm interested in sharing these objects.
And one of the best ways to do that is to get them into museums
where they can be seen.
I like the idea that these things can have a public life.
These pieces were made by Vivika and Otto Heino.
Otto specialized in making large pots.
Vivika's work reflects her great interest
in experimenting with glazes.
The Heinos had this wonderful phrase:
what you give away, you keep forever.
It exemplified their philosophy
of sharing their great knowledge with students
and people working in ceramics.
This collection is work made by Laura Andreson,
who in 1933 began teaching at UCLA.
She created the ceramic department
and worked there until she retired in 1970.
Laura did a lot of work with crystalline glazes.
This is an early uranium piece, probably still radioactive.
More uranium glazes.
Ah, now here, she had a special kiln at UCLA
for her luster glazes.
and look at the effect she got with that.
It really sparkles.
I'm not particularly interested in
just showing pretty things.
I want the work to have a story.
I want the artist, through their work, to tell a story.
I would like there to be some message or some goal
to share with people this totally different way of life,
of living with art.
The reason this piece is important to me
is Trude Guermonprez was Kay Sekimachi's teacher.
Kay found Trude, and it just turned her life around.
I made my first purchase when I was in high school.
I didn't really think of collecting.
I only thought, "I'll buy a nice piece wherever I go."
But it really didn't come across as a collection
until I'd been at it for quite a while.
I am fascinated with the vessel form.
It has human qualities.
It has a shoulder, it has a belly.
Some things have necks, feet.
While I've collected many things that are not vessels,
I keep coming back to this form.
It's something that really resonates with me.
Whenever someone comes here to see my collection,
I take great pleasure when I say, "Hold this, feel it."
This is not a museum.
You can touch it and notice how the weight is distributed.
It's a great experience for people.
- Kay: I got my painting, and I took my hot iron,
and I just pressed the image on.
- Forrest: I was interested in craftsmen and artists
whom I could meet and create a dialogue with
to understand what they were trying to accomplish.
- And this crossing of the warp threads
would make it a neater fold.
- Forrest: Those friendships mean a great deal to me
and are really more important
than the things that sit on the shelves.
I like to say, "Yes, these things are very nice,
but the real treasures are the people who made them."