Kenjilo Nanao

Eastside Road, July 29, 2011—

ON NOVEMBER 8, 1986, I apparently visited the faculty exhibition of art at California State University, Hayward, as it was then known. My journal for that year contains the page reproduced at the left. I have difficulty deciphering the handwriting at this point, a quarter-century later:

                      8 NOV

Rug.
    Formative look.

       stains (?) now gone suggest 2 books —
       children's .

 G A: “hybrid.”

            Merwah — shafen — palm; script

And then the sketch of what is clearly a painting by Kenjilo Nanao, who we visited today, in his Oakland studio.



Impossible to know at this remove what is meant by the enigmatic notations in that journal. The adjacent pages offer no help, at first, though now I think about it this was the time we were producing my opera, which helps elucidate the notes on the previous page:

          7 Nov

•Finishing the production

•Booking production : Franklin. V Jan ; photos.

• Little version.
     Ch grinder (p 292 - 301 - sc. 5)
     [female section] ( from H-Martin )
     Military service - suffering


10 45  M Fisher
12  Geo Gelles
2  J Butterfield
3  R Friese
4  A Rockefeller

BUT THE POINT IS that today we visited Nanao's studio, where we saw really quite wonderful paintings, and soon I will be writing about him, and them… I have been thinking about his painting , seeing it in my mind, for twenty-five years…