Pressing On, with Lois Harada

Lois Harada. Photo by Rue Sakayama.

Earlier this week, we were visiting the Providence Public Library and stumbled upon a new show by artist Lois Harada. Pied Type: Letterpress Printing in Providence, 1762–Today explores the history of commercial printing in Rhode Island, and will be on view through January 11, 2025. Locally known for starting the #RENAMEVISTORYDAY project, Harada’s larger practice references a range of histories, aesthetics, and ideas, from WPA Posters to Sci-Fi authors Butler and Bradbury. Works address topics like language, non-verbal communication, xenophobia, and Brett Kavanaugh head on. Great stuff!

TW: Hello, Lois Harada. Who are you?

LH: I am an artist based in North Providence, RI. Much of my work is based on my family's history of Japanese American incarceration.

TW: Could you elaborate on that? 

LH: My paternal grandmother and her family were forcibly removed from their home outside San Diego to an incarceration site in Poston, Arizona from 1942-1945. They settled in Salt Lake City afterwards where she met my grandfather—also Japanese American, but excluded from incarceration due to being from Salt Lake City and not a coastal area. This history really was not talked about in our family. My dad learned about it in his tenth grade history class and proceeded to ask my grandmother about it when he returned home. She said something like, ‘Yes, it was a terrible thing,’ and then moved on. I started to make work around incarceration the year after she passed away but my family has had more conversations about it now and are helping me research.

TW: In 2019, you made a poster related to this that simply read #RENAMEVICTORYDAY, which led to a good bit of press, and a petition from Amanda Woodward. Tell us about that.

LH: Since 2019, I've been making work to encourage RI residents to rethink the naming of Victory Day—the official title on the books, but most residents call the day VJ Day or Victory Over Japan Day. I do not want to take the holiday away or take recognition from veterans who served in World War II but do want to think of a more inclusive name to the day. Asian Americans often feel isolated or singled out on this day and most residents use it as a day at the beach. Legislation has been slow—veterans lobbying groups have a lot of sway in the state.

TW: You brought the message right to the people, at the beach.

LH: In 2020, I hired a banner towing plane to carry #RENAMEVICTORYDAY across beaches in RI on Victory Day. It was a big project for me in scale and in cost and I raised money from supporters via social media to help fund the project. The plane made several loops over beaches and it was fun to hear reports of boos or cheers from the beaches.

Above: #RENAMEVICTORYDAY plane. Photo by Rue Sakayama.

TW: Was this method of message delivery more about like, hijacking a common beach advertising thing, or a nod to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? 

LH: I didn’t realize that as part of the initial project, but it’s hard to separate it from the history. I knew that most residents used it as a beach holiday so wanted to take the project directly to them. I’m not sure if anyone at the beach interpreted it that way on the day of. I am also very interested in thinking about spinning common advertising forms and these planes often carry insurance or beverage ads. 

TW: You mention legislation here’s been slow, in part due to veterans’ lobbying. What do you think the pushback’s all about? We want to be respectful, and assume it’s rooted in deep trauma but, we also can’t ignore outright racism. There’s also Rhode Islanders being a bit resistant to change about anything, really.

LH: I can’t quite figure out what the pushback is—it seems like there is this golden idea of World War II that people are quick to defend, including veterans from other conflicts and family members. I was encouraged by the vote removing ‘Providence Plantations’ from the state name but that seems to have bolstered many people against changing Victory Day since it’s a ‘woke’ issue. It’s difficult to have conversations with people with this viewpoint too as there is nowhere to engage. We do have some veterans supporting our bill but those in opposition tend to outnumber them. I once got advice to just wait till everyone from that conflict had passed away but I’d like to change the bill while there are still survivors of Japanese American incarceration surviving too.  

TW: So you have a new show up at the Providence Public Library, Pied Type: Letterpress Printing in Providence, 1762—Today. Like #RENAMEVISTORYDAY, it’s rooted in history and research but now, looking at the physical history of your practice. How’d it all come together?

LH: I applied for a Rhode Island Humanities grant last fall and was awarded the grant near the end of the year. I worked with Dirt Palace Public Projects as my fiscal sponsor and got the project up and running in March or April of this year. I spent a lot of time visiting Special Collections at Providence Public Library with the Director, Jordan Goffin. It was very hard to winnow down materials—I could have spent a year just looking at everything. I knew we had a certain number of cases to choose from and the exhibition started to take shape by slowly identifying what fit together in each case and the overall ‘story’ of the exhibition. I realized we had some holes in material and reached out to some partner organizations who were very generous in loaning materials. Jordan was crucial in those connections as he was known in the archive and museum community. 

Above: Installation detail of Pied Type. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Writing labels and the catalog did take a good amount of time too especially since I wanted to control the design and most of the printing. The experience was a great opportunity to try curating on a larger scale—I’ve done some small group exhibitions in the past, but it’s a totally different set of muscles than making art and putting it in a gallery. 

TW: You’ve been doing print work at DWRI Letterpress for many years; how’d you end up there and what’s the shop meant to you?

LH: I met [shop founder] Dan Wood as a RISD student in 2009—he had just started teaching the letterpress printing workshop in the Printmaking Department. I was so keen to learn the medium that I took a class at AS220 the year before so I was excited to build on those skills. I started working part time for Dan about a year or so later and have seen the shop move and grow in terms of employees and the type of projects that we work on. Dan is always very supportive of other printers and is very generous with his own work (if you’ve seen him right after printing an edition, he’ll usually hand you a print!).

TW: For those who have never seen a Linotype machine, a press, etc in person, could you give a quick overview of your favorite few pieces of in-shop machinery? And outside the shop—walk us through the process of how one makes a custom souvenir-coin vending machine.

LH: I love printing on the Windmill at the shop. It’s a great commercial press that you can print around 1,000 prints in an hour…if everything is running well. I printed the show postcards on a Windmill. I am sadly mostly on the computer at the shop so this was also a great excuse for me to get on press and out of design or client management for a bit.

LH: The penny press was also grant-funded and I had some fun conversations with the grant officer about telling the story of that piece in the budget (i.e. maybe it doesn’t take the majority of the budget!). My sister is great at the internet so she helped me sleuth out the best place to order. I have a used machine; new machines were about four times the cost. They are usually rented too and not purchased outright. 

TW: Grant writing is a whole unique skill set. From the time you began applying for grants to present day, what are some pro tips and lessons-learned you can share here with first timers?

LH: It can be super easy to be discouraged by the grant writing process—I’m not telling you about the tens or hundreds of things I apply to and don’t get, you’re just hearing about the things I get! I try to think about always of simplifying my writing and getting out of the mode of ‘art talk’. Could my non-art parents understand my grant? Have I very clearly laid out how I will accomplish a project; even small things can help here. Budgets are also a great place to tell more of the story and show that you know how to get things done. I often ask for a reader, too. If the grant needs a letter of reference, I usually write a letter to 80% completion that I can share with a recommender so that they have all the stuff that I’m working on right now that should be mentioned for the particular application. Sme grants don’t allow this but I find that most people being asked for a letter find this helpful. I’m happy to read your grant or have coffee, email me! 

Above: Villa Adriana aquatint, from Harada's time in Rome.

TW: A lot of the work we’ve been discussing is Rhode Island-specific; you ever get out of here?

LH: I took a semester abroad in Rome while I was at RISD; the school had this amazing campus in Rome for many years. It started as a year long program then switched to a semester when I went. They just ‘sunsetted’ it and turned over the lease on the building that housed students and studios. I went with about twenty other RISD students in different departments. While there was a print shop there, I spent a good amount of time cutting paper into sketches of different sites that I was seeing on a daily basis. 

It was the longest I had been away from home and though scary, felt like a real chance to get to know a new place in a way that shorter trips couldn't accomplish. Grocery stores and markets became a favorite there and are still my favorite spot to check out on any trip.

TW: What’s your favorite local grocery shop? Other favorite local things, too if you’d like.

LH: East Providence is home to my favorite grocery store, Asiana. Sun and Moon across the way is also a favorite. I've celebrated several birthdays and sunny days at The East Providence Yacht Club. Odd-Kin is one of my favorite contemporary art spaces around right now too!

TW: It’s someone’s first time at Asiana—what are some must-try items, brands?

LH: They have a great selection of Korean and Japanese grocery items so I always shop there to fill up my pantry with rice and other staples, including instant miso soup or ramen or the ban chan from the fridge (the tasty side dishes served with a meal in a Korean restaurant). Freezer dumplings too!

TW: Back to Odd-Kin...we interviewed Kate a bit back and know you worked with her on the My HomeCourt project. Can you walk us through the process of initially visiting Davis Park, researching, and working with community stakeholders—and what you hoped to achieve with that project?

LH: Kate McNamara, who runs Odd-Kin, is the Executive and Creative Director of My HomeCourt and I worked closely with her and Jamilee Lacy (the former director) on this project. Davis Park was close to my old apartment in Mount Pleasant and is used by the neighboring middle school, VA, community garden as well as residents from around Providence. I spent some time visiting the park and My HomeCourt helped to gather community feedback and surveys. The park has an overlap with many languages, and I wanted to reflect that in the design through words that you might hear on a basketball court (play, together, run etc.). The letterforms were mostly printed in wood type and then scanned with the exception of the Khmer which I stitched together from other letters. I am happy with the result and love seeing people interact with it on a daily basis. 

Above: Davis Park Mural, 2022. Photo by Off the Ground Drone Services (FB)

TW: Way before you were doing murals on basketball courts and flying planes over beaches—what do you remember making as a kid? Like what’s the first ‘ah-ha!’ moment with the arts?

LH: My mom is a very crafty person (she's a quilter and avid puzzler too) and she always had fun activities for my birthday parties. One year we made plaster of Paris magnets from little molds and I remember being so entranced by the ability to make a multiple. I've been a printmaker since then!

TW: What was growing up like?

LH: My earliest memories are of family. My mom is one of ten and there were always dinners and events full of cousins and aunts and uncles. My dad and I were big fans of the drive-in theater and saw several Fast and Furious movies there. He is also an avid fly fisher and spends hours crafting flies. [Well’s addition: a great story about fishing flies]

My high school art teacher had an MFA in Printmaking and set up a studio in our classroom. I was lucky to have etching and lithography available during class and he encouraged me to apply to school at RISD.

TW: Are there other artists working with the idea of multiples / editions you’ve found inspiration in? 

LH: There’s a Sol LeWitt series of etchings that are these really rich black fields with small white shapes. I’m checking if I can find them, I saw them at a print fair in New York when I was a student. There was something super striking about seeing a wall of similar, or the same print repeated over and over that’s always stuck with me which I think informed that piece. 

Above: Young Lois, excited to be hiking. "I do not support the Dodgers, I don't know where that hat is from."

TW: As an artist who works so heavily with text, we have to ask you about other texts. Are there books, poems, etc that mean a lot to you?

LH: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. I read this for the first time in 2020 and think about it often. Also, Ubik by Philip K. Dick—I'm a big lover of sci-fi!

TW: Parable is highly quotable. “Embrace diversity. Or be destroyed.” What would you pull out as a favorite?

LH: The whole thing is so moving—I couldn’t put it down. It had so many parallels to the election and quotes felt like they could have come directly out of the news. It doesn’t seem like we’re that far away from the world depicted in the book too. I’m realizing now that the quote that sticks with me is from Parable of the Talents: 

Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery.

TW: Yow! Less than a month out from the election, that one really hits. Thanks for sharing it. So, what’s coming up? Where can people find you?

LH: We have a panel of letterpress printers on 11/12/24 from 5:30 to 7pm at PPL. Jacques Bidon, Andre Lee Bassuet, Dan Wood, and I will be talking about how we're using letterpress techniques in our practice (the first three have work in the 'contemporary' case of the exhibition!). The panel will be moderated by Director of Special Collections at PPL, Jordan Goffin. He and I will also host a hands-on print workshop on the last day of the exhibition on January 11th from 10-12pm.