On exhibit through Saturday, March 27, 2004:
Roger Shimomura | Stereotypes and Admonitions
This series illustrates incidents of racial insensitivity I have experienced during my life. Accompanying each painting is a written description of the incident that inspired the piece. Also included in this series are events that have affected the Asian American community on a regional and national basis over the past 60 years — essentially my lifetime. - Roger Shimomura
On November 22, 2003, at the end of the "Places I Have Slept" series, I wrote:
I have seen painting shows where a painter has a motif, a figure, a layout, and each painting in that body of work is just a different set of colors. Imagine any one of my drawings repeated ten or twelve times where the only real problem from work to work is color. This works well for some people, but I seem to have a hard time doing this. I've got to at least do enough of a significant variation from work to work so that I have no only a color problem but a drawing problem, a spatial problem, a scale problem, to work with.
About the use of the bodhi as a subject, I'll let the Wikipedia speak:
Bodhi (Pali, Sanskrit: lit. (supreme) knowledge, Enlightenment., from the Sanskrit word "Budh") is a title given to the specific Awakening experience attained by the Indian spiritual teacher Gautama Buddha. It is sometimes said to be the attainment of complete and perfect sanity.In these drawings I wanted to find an image that had a kind of dynamic strength - movement, off-balanced catching, or balanced instability, or something continually righting itself- caught in that moment of being held in balance, a moment of stillness about to change again. The four rectangles were a solid structure, though not symmetrical, and and empty frame either floated over these rectangles, or appeared to be embedded in each rectangle, or even sat at a lower level. I liked those different readings. Stillness and movement.
Bodhi is attained only by the accomplishment of the Paramitas (perfections), when the Four Noble Truths are fully grasped, and when all karma has reached cessation. At this moment, all greed, aversion, delusion, ignorance, craving and ego-centered consciousness are extinguished.
See also: Buddhism and Nirvana

My brother's new son, my nephew, Nathaniel, born February 24, 2004.
Bummed to hear this morning on KALW on the way to work that Alistair Cooke is retiring his Letter From America, which I hear every Monday at 8:50. Age 95, and a fifty eight years run.
| Dasarâjadharma: Ten Principles of Good Governance | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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1: Dâna Giving |
2: Sîla Moral integrity |
3: Pariccâga Philanthropy |
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5: Maddava Gentleness |
6: Tapa Self-control
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7: Akkodha Absence of anger |
8: Avihmsâ Non-violence |
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10: Avirodha - Absence of obstruction |
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Raoul De Keyser at Whitechapel, London.
10: Avirodha - Absence of obstruction
This answers a question for me about paintings displayed at the Asian Art Museum (and other places in general, as well):
While there are about 300 works in the Asian’s collection of Chinese painting and calligraphy, including some outstanding masterpieces, this remains an area where growth is needed. Why? Preservation of these fragile works on silk or paper requires that they be shown as little as possible: the six months every five years that we allow is pushing the limits of what is desirable. There are spaces for 46 paintings in the Chinese galleries, which means we would need some 460 paintings—or about 160 more than we have at present—to fill the necessary rotations without exceeding the amount of exposure each painting is allowed.
Dan Walsh:
Rescuing Art from 'Visual Culture Studies' by Michelle Marder Kamhi