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Sunday, June 04, 2000
One rainy day a few months ago, I started out from the Post-Gazette building to meet a friend for lunch. With the rain drumming on my umbrella, I ducked into the subway station at Stanwix Street and took a train to Grant Street.
I was late and running when I caught a glimpse of an object in the window of the Society for Contemporary Craft satellite museum. My heart jumped. I stopped, shook myself and stared. I was back in Japan, where the stylized art has a spiritual quality. I needed to have the piece at which I was looking. Constructed of cherry wood, a little more than three feet high, it was cut like a piece of calligraphy and anchored by a single granite stone hanging from a cord at the center. Having it would improve my life.
Ah, yes. But the sign, when I saw it, said sold. I turned away, biting my lip with disappointment.
After lunch I went to look again. Every few days I went back. Having finally thought of it, I called the Pittsburgh artist, Tadao Arimoto, who said yes, he would make another.
I have just been to see it. The piece is more beautiful than my memory of it which, as time passed, I began to suspect was exaggerated. Elated, I threw my arms around the artist's neck.
I asked him to tell me about himself.
Tadao Arimoto was born in Nara, Japan, in 1949. His father had a curatorial/management position with the city's National Museum. When Arimoto was 3, his father was transferred to Kyoto and the national museum there.
"Museums were my playground," he says.
Arimoto entered college intending to major in sociology. Restless, dissatisfied and wanting to work with his hands as well as his mind, he transferred to an art school where the Japanese director had studied at the Bauhaus, the famous German school of design. About this time he met his future wife, Diane Wright, an American. Wright spoke Japanese and had been in the country several years studying textiles.
After marriage, they decided on a two-year visit to the United States, where they have lived for 24 years. They came to Pittsburgh because the Wright family was here. Arimoto gave two reasons for the decision to stay. First, he thought his son and daughter should be raised in their mother's country. Second, traditions in Japan were hobbling his instinct to experiment.
He describes his first year and a half in the States as interesting. He had no command of the language and no job.
"I entered childhood again," he says. "I learned a little, and slowly, like a child with blocks, I built on what I learned. It was a stimulating time."
Among the things Arimoto must have learned was to speak slowly and articulate precisely. He has Japanese manners, modest and respectful, and total command of English. He has an interesting face, Japanese with a Latin cast. He speculates that living here has altered his expression.
He says that on a recent visit to Mexico, he was pulled to the side by an official and asked whether it was his father or his mother who was Mexican.
Similar things have happened to him in Japan when he and his family return for occasional visits.
"I collect Japanese wood-working tools. I find the best ones in the countryside. Workmen there ignore me. 'Aha, you speak Japanese,' they say when I ask for assistance."
The tools he has acquired help him with his woodworking, which has been his occupation since he came to Pittsburgh. From 1977 to 1988, he taught at Bidwell Training Center, and in 1988 he opened Arimoto Design and Woodworking in the Casey Industrial Park, North Side.
His first commercial job came from Nick Nicholas at Nicholas Coffee. He now builds bins and dispensers for several coffee companies and displays for a few food operations. In tandem with his business goes his art. Recognition has come from several sources, among them Elvira Peake of The Clay Place in Shadyside. When I asked Peake for confirmation of her endorsement, she said "I think Tadao is one of the finest woodworker/furniture makers anywhere in the United States."
Donald Miller, art critic emeritus for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was also supportive. At a Three Rivers Arts Festival, Miller included Arimoto's among the five pieces he considered best of show.
The Society for Contemporary Craft, in addition to sponsoring shows of his work, has purchased several of Arimoto's pieces for use in their sales room.
"I consider Tadao one of Pittsburgh's artistic treasures," says Janet McCall, society director. McCall has two of his pieces in her private collection.
His work is on view at several city sites. When, in 1987, Bidwell moved to its new building designed by Pittsburgh architect Tasso Katselas, Bill Strickland, president and CEO of the school, asked Arimoto to design 30 pieces of furniture for the interior. Among his other commissions are the wooden doors for Poale Zedeck Congregation, Squirrel Hill, and a scattering of benches and background screens for the park area in front of Shadyside Hospital.
"Very gratifying," he says about that project. "I went to take pictures of the benches, and all were filled."
Work waiting for a show or ordered by a customer can be seen in his studio. located alongside his commercial space. He is happy to have visitors. Because pieces, artistic and functional, move in and out rapidly, the showroom may be full or empty. Photographs are always available. Arimoto is generous with his time. He is quick to promote other artists while answering questions about his own work. He says that in designing, his intention is that his pieces should get better with time.
"They should accept scratches and scuffs gracefully," he says of the textured surfaces for dining room and end tables. He intends them to last, and his sincere wish is that they serve their designated purpose with distinction.