Ep. 128: Furniture Designer & Educator Wendy Maruyama
Furniture designer & maker, artist, and educator Wendy Maruyama is a legend in her field. Born with Cerebral Palsy, deaf, and growing up 3rd generation Japanese-American she discovered an interest in woodworking as a teenager and by early adulthood was one of the first two women to get an MFA in Furniture Design from RIT. Throughout her nearly 50-year career, Wendy has been extremely influential in the world of studio and artistic furniture. She’s also a badass feminist, and funny as all hell.
Read the full transcript here.
Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and This is Clever. Today I’m talking to furniture designer & maker, artist, and educator Wendy Maruyama. Wendy is a legend. Throughout her nearly 50 year career Wendy has been extremely influential in the world of studio and artistic furniture. Internationally exhibited, her work is in the permanent collections of several museums including the Victoria & Albert and LACMA among others… and she’s the recipient of several NEA grants, Fulbrights, and too many awards and accolades to mention. She is also a life-long educator and for 30 years was the head of Furniture Design at San Diego State, establishing it as one of the most prominent and respected furniture design programs in the United States. Third-generation Japanese American, she was born with cerebral palsy and deaf in both ears. She discovered an interest in woodworking as a teenager and by early adulthood was one of the first two women to get an MFA in Furniture Design from Rochester Institute of Technology. I did my undergrad with Wendy at San Diego State so she’s a very important figure in my life. She’s also a badass feminist, and funny as hell... Let’s hear from Wendy…
Wendy Maruyama: My name is Wendy Maruyama and I’m from San Diego, California. I am a woodworker and with a specific focus on furniture and I feel like woodworking has a lot of potential for breaking outside of the mold of what furniture can be and go beyond sculpture. It’s a hybrid.
AD: Well, we’re gonna talk all about your work, but before we get to woodworker Wendy, we go all the way back to zero. I want you to take us to your childhood and tell us where did you grow up and what was your family dynamic and what were you like as a little kid?
WM: I was born in a small town called La Junta, Colorado which is east of Pueblo, but my memory of living there is pretty blurry because we only lived there until I was about four or five and then the family decided to move us to Hemet, California and my father started farming. So, he raised up corn and cantaloupe and tomatoes and cucumbers, whatever was in season.
So, my memory of living in Hemet was pretty idyllic because it was, we just lived in this old, old farmhouse kind of thing and we were surrounded by fields and I really, I guess you live an innocent life at that point. You don't really know about your shortcomings or your deficiencies when you're that young. So, I think, you know, my memories of going to kindergarten all the way up to third grade was very pleasant. I am told that it was a primarily white city, we were probably the only Asian people living in Hemet in San Jacinto, but you know, when you're young, again you don't think about those things and it's too bad that we start to develop those distinctions as you get older.
AD: Did you sense that your family was aware of being the only Asians? Did they feel 'other'?
WM: They were sensitive to it because you have to remember that only, say 10 years before that was 1942 when Pearl Harbor was bombed and the Japanese-American community had to vacate their homes in California. That affected my mother's side of the family. So, I think she was probably more sensitive to those things than my father because my father grew up in a farming community in Colorado and a lot of the people he was friends with there were other Japanese-Americans and a lot of Mexican-Americans and of course a few Caucasian farmers, too.
So, I don't think that he felt the discrimination as much or maybe he wasn't as sensitive [0.05.00] to it. I will add that my father has a great sense of humour and I think that humour is what got him through to the other people that he came across. The guys fell in love with him because he was such a funny guy. [Laughter]
They eventually forgot that he was Japanese-American. Maybe we were lucky in that regard, but I was younger so I wasn't really aware. My parents never said, “Oh, you can't believe what happened to me in the store.” or, you know we were kind of protected from that.
AD: And how did you, with Cerebral Palsy and hearing impairments, how did your parents treat you? It doesn't seem like they treated you any differently than a regularly-abled person.
WM: Well, you know my mother was wonderful. I mean she believed that there was everything she can do to make me better in terms of physical therapy and speech therapy and I think my father had more of a difficult time with that. He was a little more concerned about appearances and especially amongst other Japanese-Americans, I think Asian-Americans tend to be kind of more judgemental about their own kind and as we got older they had a drive for their kids to become doctors and lawyers and that kind of people. My parents probably didn't envision me as someday becoming a doctor, a lawyer, whatever, and because of my disabilities they didn't have high expectations, you know. It was just the way it was back in the 50s, you know, 50s and 60s that you're kind of stuck with whatever you end up with, I mean even I didn't think I was going to amount to much.
AD: But, you've been so singularly driven your whole life. I'm surprised to hear that.
WM: Well, first of all because of my disability I was really, really shy throughout; certainly was not by any means an extrovert. You know? I was a total introvert and I barely spoke to people because I was afraid of what people would think when they heard me talk, as a kid I think I was pretty quiet and just tried to stay in the background.
But, it wasn't horrible. I mean I went to a school that was eventually in Chula Vista, we moved from Hemet to Chula Vista in '59 it’s a suburb of San Diego and it's a much more diverse community. So, in addition to many other Asian people there was also a significant number of hearing-impaired people at the school that I was going to because they had a special program for the deaf and that is where I learned to lip-read and hopefully improve my speech and that sort of thing.
So, I think what was nice about being at that school was the other kids who were ‘normal’ didn't pick on us as much as another school I had gone to where I was the only deaf person in the whole school..
AD: Well it must have been really nice to not be singled out like that and have some support.
WM: Well, the funny thing is maybe [0.10.00] they were making fun of me, but I probably didn't hear them.
AD: [Laughter] Well, that's fine
WM: So, you know
AD: Joke's on them! [Laughter]
WM: There's some advantages, I did get into art at that point. I started taking art classes when I was in fourth grade and I was pretty fucking good at it, you know. And everybody really loved the dinosaurs that I made out of clay and I really felt like, oh my god, I'm the best student at this clay class. I wasn't so good at math and, geometry and that kind of stuff, but I had one thing that I was good at.
AD: So, is clay how you expressed yourself as a teenager? Is that where you sort of started to find your personal identity?
WM: Grade school and junior high. Of course we had to take home-making then, too. But, I kinda had fun in those sewing classes. I feel bad that kids that age don't know how to sew any more. Of course we weren't allowed to take shop class in grade school or high school,
AD: Just due to being female?
WM: No, we were not allowed to take shop, so I’m glad that existed for me during that time from 1964 to the time that I graduated from high school.
WM: I hated high school. Okay, it was all about being popular and I was not popular. Of course I wanted to be, but I was not popular. So, I couldn't wait to get out of high school.
AD: Well, where did you go after high school?
WM: Southwestern College in Chula Vista.
AD: Oh, okay.
WM: Originally my parents wanted me to take a typing class so that I could learn to be a secretary and make money that way, but I couldn't type 50 words a minute and so that's when I decided to take a craft class at Southwestern and that was my first experience with woodworking.
AD: Oh my god! And you never looked back!
WM: Yeah! So, that was really the beginning of my life turning over a little bit. I always thought that woodworking was for men. I mean that was, you're conditioned to think that in the 50s and 60s, but I don't know what the big deal was because all you have to do is push a button and a machine comes on. I mean, what's the big deal? [Laughter] So, it was kind of challenging and it was fun to do something that I thought was taboo for a woman at that time.
AD: And then did you also start to find your passion for it?
WM: Mmm-mm. It developed further when, I mean no one can actually learn, as you know woodworking’s kind of complicated and there's a lot to know about safety and hand tools. So, by the time I felt really comfortable with it, that was when I moved to Boston and went to Boston University for two years just to further my experience in woodwork.
AD: Yeah, and you studied with... Who did you study with there?
WM: Alphonse Mattia, remember?
AD: Alphonse, yes!
WM: But, he's great. Alphonse was really wonderful to work with because he not only had the traditional background of furniture making; he was also on the fringe of exploiting what woodworking could do with that just beautiful furniture. I mean he made beautiful furniture but he was able to kind of expand on that back in the 70s.
AD: And so you did two years at Boston University and then you went to RIT?
WM: That's correct. When I was at BU I also studied with Jere Osgood.
AD: Yes.
WM: Who is fantastic, I mean Jere is just, as far as I'm concerned he's a god. And he's really humble but he really knows his stuff. It was a nice combination of young Alphonse and mature Jere Osgood.
AD: That sounds like a star-studded education right there. I can imagine you also started to really expand upon what you were able to do technically and creatively and that pulled you to RIT Where you studied and where went to grad school, right?
WM: I realized that if I wanted to take my career to a certain level of, say, teaching or just really advancing my own portfolio of work, I needed to go to grad school. So, that was a good experience. It was a little more difficult there
AD: So, graduate school at RIT; you were one of the first two women to graduate from that program.
WM: That's right.
AD: I mean you're really trail-blazing here, Wendy [laughs] and at this point [laughter] how has your family grown to accept that this is your destiny and that you are a burgeoning wood star?
WM: Well, you know, my father was very impatient with me because he, you know, it was expensive for my parents to help me go to school. You know, they're just farmers and secretaries so, I mean I understand now, but at the time I was very frustrated because he, you know, I have two younger sisters that he clearly wanted to save enough money to send them to college, too.
And so he was wondering why I was going to Boston University when I wasn't really getting a degree. I was just getting a sort of a post-grad experience there with no intention of getting a degree. They didn't have an MFA and I didn't need a BFA because I already had one. He would call me like late at night and say, “When are you going to get out of there? I can't afford to pay for all of your wood and, you know, your rent and you know you've got to get a job.” and you know, this and that and this and that.
And finally at this point I decided to go to graduate school because I was told that if I got an MFA I might have a better chance of having some sort of salaried position [0.20.00] in higher education and to me that was a little scary because I never envisioned myself to become a teacher. I thought maybe I would just go and be in a little shop by myself and make little cabinets, but my work was also starting to go beyond furniture and I needed room to explore that more extensively.
When I told Dad that I am going to go to grad school he hit the roof because, how many more years is that, and you know, how much is that going to cost. So, I just managed to like plod on despite those threatening phone calls and. -
AD: So, how did you get started professionally? What were some of the early big, exciting pieces, projects, exhibitions, breaks?
WM: Well, in grad school I was probably the first person to start painting the wood which, you know, really not a big deal now but back in the day it was considered to be sacrilegious to paint the wood. And of course when we get, when we run into an obstacle or an objection by your teacher of course you want to go even further across the line, right? [Laughter] I started painting, coloring the work that I made for my thesis. keeping that kind of [** 0.22.13] that's how graduate school ended for me. When I left RIT my first job was teaching at Apalachian Center for Crafts in Tennessee and I had the freedom to make anything I wanted pretty much, and that's when I made the Mickey Mackintosh chair.
It's really funny because I really wanted to make this chair that emulated Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Mickey Mouse because growing up in Southern California that the ears were so iconic and the high backed chair that Mackintosh designed was so iconic. And so I wanted to mash those together and that, you know, it turns out to be my trademark piece. I mean to this day I'm still making those chairs and they're in the largest museum collections now and it's funny because I could barely get $500 a chair back in the day. But, now they're selling for $14,000 a piece. So, yeah, that's good! [Laughter]
[laughter] So, I mean you asked about any signature pieces and that's probably the one that most people seem to remember the most.
AD: At what point, I have to ask this because in case our listeners don't know, I studied with you at San Diego State and your furniture design program, that's where I did my undergrad and that program, you know, people travelled from far and wide to come and teach with you. It's a very important program and you touched a lot of people's lives and you made a lot of furniture makers came out of your program.
WM: Yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty proud of that fact. I mean, it was fun for me because like you mentioned everybody came from all over the country, even the world, to little old San Diego State. I even learned how to say the word ‘Ypsilanti.’ [Laughter]
Ypsilanti, it's where Amy's from and so that just made [0.25.00] life so interesting and we also had some really great students when you were there. It was like a real close community of people you know it was just really an amazing time and it's funny because each wave of students was a different community that have managed to stay in touch in their own little groups. You know, there's one right after yours, you graduated. You were with Kanya Aguinga.
AD: She was after me. But, then when she came back to Los Angeles after grad school she worked on my TV show and that's how we met each other.
WM: Oh, you're kidding! Oh, I thought you met before in San Diego.
AD: No, but of course we knew a lot of the same people and we had gone to the same places and now she's my best friend in the whole world.
WM: Yeah, yeah. She's great, isn't she? So, that's what's really rewarding to me that the community took form. I think one of my primary goals as a teacher was not only teaching people, but it was to nurture that very sense of community and making sure that people did things together or partied together. I mean that was quite a partying group of people.
AD: Yeah, we partied very hard. [Laughter] That is true. But, we also worked very hard and it was incredibly collaborative and the mentorship was really off the charts. That's the culture that you created.The students were very inter-dependent and very supportive of each other. I felt like I learned a lot from you, but I learned so much from everyone else as well.
WM: From everybody else. I really do think that's important because you've got, you know, 20 or 30 different minds working under the same roof and they all have a different approach to a specific problem and you know, I think you need to have that.
AD: Yeah, well you created something really, really special there and you did it for 30 years, right?
WM: 30 years! Not including Tennessee and CCA. -
AD: Okay.
WM: Which were my first jobs before I came to San Diego.
AD: Wow!
WM: Yeah.
AD: And you retired five years ago, I was at your retirement party. Congratulations!
WM: Yeah. [Laughter] Well, funny because I [** 0.28.11] where my current studio mate is now one of the faculty members at San Diego State. So, I mean it's to sort of stay kind of on the post of what's going on in the program and of course, you know I have. A hands-on approach at this point, but I always like to see where things are going to go. Like right now it's kind of a scary time because I think a lot of programs are reassessing what they can do given the new protocols going to be established and enforced upon them in terms of the academic year. I'm just glad I'm not doing it.
AD: [Laughter] Yeah, you got out just in time.
WM: [Laughter] But, I've been sitting in on some of the discussions about that. No, it's very fascinating, you know. The challenges I think we'll come up with some positive elements that wouldn't have come up otherwise.
AD: I do think it's a very interesting time. We're having to rely on digital technology to reinforce a hands-on craft. And the hands-on is more important than ever because we're burned out from all the digital technology and so people are really needing and craving an ability to work with their hands. Have a sensitivity to the material world, decarbonize the way things are manufactured, [0.30.00] build things that last longer and mean more and all of that requires a very active physicality in a hands-on nature. But, now we're having to use digital tools to teach that. So, it's a really fascinating juxtaposition.
WM: Right. Right. I think the digital stuff is great. I still hope, here's the problem I have with digital working, it has such an imprint on the work that's made that it's really obvious that it was cut out with a CNC or with a laser cut. You know, I get a little tired of the stacked Baltic birch for example. [Laughter]
Really cool at first... I don't mind the digital technology that replaced some of the laborious hand, you know, traditional methods like bands on a million parts that are identical. I think CNC is great for that, making multiple parts that are exactly the same size to build a larger piece. But at the end I'd like to see more, I'd like it to look more handmade perhaps, you know.
AD: So, Wendy, over the span of your career you've done a lot of residencies, earned many, many awards, accolades, grants. Generated a vast and meaningful body of work, been acquired by museums, exhibited internationally, oh my god, I'm so proud of you! [Laughter] You're such a fucking bad ass!
WM: Well, you know, now now Dad is very proud of me!
AD: Good! He came around!
WM: Every time Dad comes to one of my shows the first thing he would look for is the price list and then he'll want to see how much you get and how much you got and finally, you know, he's got [** 0.32.47] my back, you know. [Laughter] But, you know that's now how I put value to my own work. I mean that's Dad, but for assigning numbers to my work, that's something that I really don't care about but maybe I should care more about it. It's a very complicated thing, you know, pricing.
AD: Well, how do you assign meaning to your work? What's significant, what holds the most significance for you over your career?
WM: Well first of all you mentioned residencies and I, I can't stress enough how important it is for artists to remove the familiar work spaces and work in a different culture maybe, or a different country and culture because I think it broadens your outlook on life in general. One of the most important things for me was to do the residency in Tokyo for six months; I lived there for six months without learning a word of Japanese if you'd believe that. [Laughter]
Being Japanese-American I felt like it was important for me to give back to my roots somehow and to understand where my grandparents came from as well as to appreciate the value of craft in Japan. I mean Japan's craft history and culture is so, you can't compare it with any of the other different craft cultures, it's so impeccable and so simple [0.35.00] but so complicated.
And so that was important for me to be in that kind of an environment and of course the work that I made there was inspired by being there. Like my color palette changed completely, the California color palette was like florescent red and blue and green and really bright colors and very aggressive shapes, but when I came back from Japan the work became more restrained maybe, the shapes were subtler and gentler and the colors were muted.
So, I really loved the effect that the residency has on my work. Then another residency that was important was when I went to New York for six months for a residency I decided to use that time to do research about the Japanese-American incarceration camps. I knew so little about it before then and I felt like that was an oversight on my part to not even be able to name the 10 major incarceration camps. So, the body of work that came out of there was more kind of an homage to my family and their community and the difficulties that they suffered from being displaced and simply because of their race and how they just managed to come back and forge a new life for themselves after such a horrible experience.
So, I really needed to kind of feel that through the work and maybe create homage to those people, 120,000 people who had to go to camp. So, that was meaningful to me and before that I didn't know very many Japanese-Americans other than my family. And so this project put me together with a lot of Japanese-American communities, like the Buddhist temples, various churches and organizations that pulled together
AD: Are you talking about The Tag Project? Can you tell our listeners about that, what that is?
WM: Yeah. I'm happy to. If any of you have seen pictures taken in 1942 of all these families that were taken away to these camps, they all had these identifying tags that had their names and their locations and serial numbers that was assigned to them and that was almost symbolic to them -
Not much different than the gold star that they assigned to the Jews in Nazi Germany. Each person did have a number and so, and then I had no idea how many people were taken away from their homes, 120,000 people. So, I felt like, you know, I wanted to recreate the tags for each individual person that was taken away. I felt that that would be a, you know give the viewer some visualization about how many people were affected. Creating 10 large groupings of tags was kind of a daunting project.
But a lot of people found out about it and they wanted to volunteer and so we had big tag parties at these different organizations, including the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC, a couple of local galleries [0.40.00] in San Diego, the Buddhist temple here, the Japanese American Historical Society here and in Santa Barbara and I was also sending out shoe boxes full of tags and I made a kit that had a number and stamp and a database, it was usually 10 pages of names and each person would fill it out with their family, their friends, and then send it back to me.
And it took about four years to accumulate all the tags to assemble into these camps. But, for me it became a social event and just to get to know all of these people that knew my grandparents and my parents when they were younger,, it was like a little bit of a storytelling event. It's kind of like quilting bees where people sit around and stitch a quilt except in this case they were writing tags. A lot of former incarcerees participated and they would say, “Oh, I know this guy.”
AD: Oh, wow!
WM: You know, “We went fishing together.” “Oh, this is my great-grandmother.” You know it's really kind of nice to kind of bring the personal stories out with these names. So, that was what The Tag Project was about.
AD: What an incredible active way to honor that experience.
WM: I wished that my grandparents were still alive to see all that. It was really cathartic for me to be able to do that. So, I, you know I don't know that I would do it again, but I'm glad I did it once. It's kind of like when I hand-planed a book by Pisha Pobenga [Laughter] But it wouldn't fit in the planer. Jere didn't want me to cut it in half and run it through the planer in two pieces so I had to hand-plane it. It's good to do it once, but I don't think I would do it again. [Laughter] And that's the way I feel about The Tag Project. I'm glad I did it once but I'm not so sure I'd do it again.
AD: Well, you're always sort of pushing boundaries. You're very much a woodworker and you can hold your own with the craftiest, most technically astounding woodworkers but you've never stayed static. A lot of your recent work includes video. You've always sort of pushed boundaries and incorporated a modern concept Into your work, and I wonder if you can talk about the process, the creative process and the concept behind the work that includes video.
WM: Hmm-mm In the most recent work the videos took me it was a way of archiving the memory of the subject matter that's in the video. In this case the Wildlife Project was about the problems of poaching wild animals for financial gain and you know this doesn't get put in, if this is not controlled we're no longer going to have those magnificent animals roaming the earth.
So, in a way it's maybe a kind of a cynical approach to the project. I figure that the video of the rhinoceros should be the only remnant or memory left of that animal if the poaching continues.
AD: Well, you've done a bunch of videos, right? You've done the vanities and The Wildlife Project and even just the idea of including video built [0.45.00] into your carcass work is a pretty intense mix of materials.
WM: Well, you know, the visual aspect of video I think triggers a different response to how you look at the work. There's kind of an air of familiarity, but at the same time it seems to get, that activity that you see on the screen is displaced from context. Well, for example the vanities were about pretty much vanity I guess; when women are primping themselves in front of the mirror we change the perception of ourselves maybe.
But in this case it was an Asian woman that was putting on make-up and she was exaggerating her Asian features in the video and it was sort of relating to how I think people are perceiving me as an Asian person or what people expect from Asian women, the stereotype of the beguiling, exotic, geisha girl, the evil dragon lady, you know. I just was kind of addressing identity perhaps in the video.
AD: How does your creative process start? I mean do you tend to build everything in your head before you get going, or do you kind of work through it and let it unfold really intuitively or?
WM: No, kind of hard. I mean like right now I don't have any ideas in my head right now, but I think the works that I have been doing in the last 10 years have had some social message attached to it and I don't really consider myself an activist of any type, but I do get upset about certain things that happen in this world. But, I think in a way it's therapeutic to address the things that trouble you through your work.
The most recent work is actually about dementia and Alzheimer's because I have a very close Aunt that didn't have any kids, she was kind of like a second mom and her dementia became pretty bad last year and we finally had to make the difficult decision to put her into assisted living just at the beginning of the year. I've been thinking a lot about mirrors, I think mirrors are amazing things I think and that is just why I used the mirrors in the vanities.
You know, if you remember? The vanities video was behind a two-way mirror, so when you start off the video the mirror disappears and then when the video stopped it became a mirror. In Japan in the old days an older woman, usually an older geisha would use a black, lacquered mirror because supposedly the black lacquer diminishes your wrinkles. And so you look more beautiful in black lacquer. In fact I wish I had a black lacquered mirror, too. [Laughter] I digress. And so I made a mirror frame for my Aunt. Well, it's not for her, but it's for a show about Alzheimer's and so the mirror is perfectly black-black all the way across except at the very end [0.50.00] it begins to ripple. So, it's almost like you're looking at water that's moving kind of. So, your reflection becomes distorted and so I sort of envisioned the mirror as being a representative of memory or the lack of, or the disappearance of memory.
So, that's the most recent piece that I just completed before the pandemic. But, you know I don't know how that came to me, but I think it's life in general that triggers these ideas. You asked about how I came up with these projects and I think it's like opening a magazine and reading about how terrible the elephant poaching problem is and so somehow that I decide to make something that's about that problem. I don't know.
AD: I mean you mentioned the pandemic and I mean this has been a crazy year, 2020 so far.
WM: Oh, god. No shit.
AD: [Laughter] No shit! How are you doing with all of this? I mean I've known you a while and I've never imagined you being daunted or slowed down, but like I know you had a death in your family recently and this is a hard-ass year. How are you reckoning with all of this uncertainty and turbulence?
WM: Well, in the beginning I didn't feel like there was a whole lot of change in my routine because what I was doing was just being at home and then going to the studio to work and I've been very lucky that, you know, our studio only has two people working in it. So, Adam and I just simply work at different times and we us PPE when we're in the same room together. But, we're both very careful about it and so we've been able to work like normal, but that was back in, you know, March and April. Then all of a sudden it's May and it's July and then as I was telling you earlier, I'm missing that communication with other people in real time.
I've only started using Zoom in the last month because, because of my hearing-impairment it's very difficult for me to use telephones and Zoom is not really the perfect solution. But, I've realized that I need to do it more because I'm suffering from this isolation and not being able to talk as much as I'm used to. And I'm not a big talker, but I like listening to people and, you know, talking and I miss going out to dinner and lunch which I'm sure a lot of people are missing that aspect of life.
But, it's hard, but then on the other hand I did make a few pieces that I probably would not have made because the pandemic is just weird, you know, just a weird piece with branches and gold leaf and you know.
WM: And brushes, I learned how to make a brush.
AD: Cool.
WM: And I just finished taking an online class at Anderson Ranch with Adrien Segal, we learned what was called photogrammetry. Which is a process of scanning with the iPhone, getting 3D images and using that too cut, work out, and CNC or the laser cutter or the 3D printer and that was, you know, virtual in the digital work and I probably wouldn't have done that under [0.55.00] normal circumstances
AD: I am happy to hear that you haven't slowed down, learning new technology and making your work. Do you ever just like look back over the course of your life and,sort of in the way that you grappled with the enormity of the internment camps and there were 120,000 people whose lives were affected. Now in a much more positive way, you've affected a large volume of people's lives, too. Through your furniture program but also through the work that you make and how many exhibits and residencies you've done, how your work has been viewed and used and acquired by so many people, they have long-term relationships with it.
You've fostered and nurtured so many communities and you know other makers and creatives. Do you ever look back at that and just kind of feel like, damn! I did something real here.
WM: Yeah, I do. I mean it's kind of, I sort of think of everybody as my extended family. Growing up meaning in the 20s and 30s I never really had a desire to marry and have children. Having kids was never something that I really wanted to do and so consequently marriage didn't seem to be necessary until I was 55, I got married when I was 55. I recommend that to most people. [Laughter]
To wait that long, but, I feel happy that I have all these students that have become sort of like my extended family and, I'm very lucky that I see a lot of them on a regular basis, even now they're spread out all over the country. I always try to make an effort to visit them if I happen to be in the State where they are, and I always have a great time every time I see them and it's always amazing to see their progress and their shop and to meet their students and to visit their schools. I feel fortunate that my life is so rich with these people. I mean I'm not rich financially but I feel very wealthy in terms of the kinds of connections I've had with people like this job and observing how people have navigated their own path. There's no two alike.
AD: Well, I personally thank you. You've impacted my life in a really meaningful way and I'm grateful, I'm super grateful.
WM: You did, too! Oh my god! You wanted to make upholstery out of seatbelts. [Laughter] Remember that? You made that incredible piece and I was like, no Amy, you can't do that.
AD: Well, you said so yourself when you experience, you know, some resistance from your authority figures you fight even harder in that direction. [Laughter]
WM: I love it.
AD: When you think about things that you want to do next, that you want to tackle and take on, what comes to mind?
WM: Well, I kind of miss travelling, you know. I want to get out of here. I want to go [1.00.00] somewhere new maybe. I don't know what I want to make yet, but right now I'm just thinking, I don't think too far into the future like some people do. But, maybe I’ll continue the digital works that I just learned last week or maybe I'll just reorganize my studio or maybe, I don't know, go on a diet. I don't know
[Laughter] But, right now like you said the pandemic has really screwed things up and so it's really hard to think about the future right now. I do want to add that I've joined a couple of non-profits this year and so I'll be on the advisory board for Crafting America which is in Los Angeles and I have also joined the Craft Emergency Relief Foundation. So, I will be busy with the non-profit work. So, I'm looking forward to that.
AD: Well, Wendy you are a true power-house and it has been really fun for me to visit with you like this and also get to ask you all of these personal questions that I never had the guts to ask you when I was your student.
WM: Oh, what kind of personal questions?
AD: Oh, you know, about growing up, being the only Asian-American in a farming community.
WM: You know, to be honest I don't miss, I'm only reminded that I'm deaf or Asian when someone else mentions it. You know. I don't even think about it, yes. I sometimes forget.
AD: Well, you know I forget it, too. Because I think of you, your primary characteristics to me are your fierce, fierce sense of humor and incisive wit and talent and character and I think of your work, I think of Mickey Mackintosh and then somewhere in there I remember that you're... I always think that you're female, I never forget that you're a woman, and a very powerful role-model for me. So, thank you.
WM: That's true. I think just being a female in the field is probably the most salient identity that I'm most aware of on a daily basis and I think that's important. I certainly don't reject that notion at all and one of my earliest mentors was actually another very well-known female artist and her name is Arline Fisch, I don't know if you took any classes with her at San Diego State.
AD: She taught jewelry design at San Diego State.
WM: Yeah! She was my teacher when I was in undergrad school and she was going all over the world and she was, you know, making work and teaching and I remember thinking I want to be like that, you know. I didn't know that women could do that and she was doing that, she was doing residencies in Scandinavia, she was in a lot of solo shows in New York City and she was just really her own person and that's when I kind of, you know, I want to be like that. So, I think it’s important to have a mentor at any point, you know. I'd love to have a new mentor, even at the age of 57 it would be fun to have another, you know, a mentor. I don't mind being a mentor to others, I'm happy if I can encourage people to pursue whatever they want. The way I look at it is if I can do it, you can do it! I mean you know I'm deaf and all that stuff and I could do it. So, being an able-bodied person you should certainly do it, you know.
AD: Well, Wendy it has been such a joy to talk to you about your life and your work and you're such a power-house. And I miss getting drunk with you.
WM: The only thing that's missing is a couple of martinis that we could both be drinking, you know. [Laughter] I can't wait until we can do that next time.
AD: Yes, next time.
WM: Thank you so much for having me here AD: I'm so happy we got to do this. Thank you so much.
WM: Thank you.
AD: Thank you for listening! To see images of Wendy’s work and read the show notes, click the link in the details of this episode on your podcast app, or go to cleverpodcast.com where you can also sign up for our newsletter subscribe to Clever on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you would please do us a favor and rate and review - it totally helps! We also love chatting with you on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook - you can find us @cleverpodcast You can find me, @amydevers. Clever is produced by 2VDE Media with editing by Rich Stroffolino and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is proudly distributed by Design Milk.
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Wendy Maruyama
What is your earliest memory?
My earliest memory (I might have been 4 years old ) is going out to the strawberry fields with my mom. She used to pick strawberries on the farm. And I got peed on by a frog when we were out there. I was traumatized.
What’s the best advice that you’ve ever gotten?
The best advice I’ve gotten in terms of my practice is to be prolific. There is definitely some truth to that because for every five to ten pieces that you make, one of them will be a masterpiece, or a truly killer piece but it takes the other four to 9 pieces to reach that.
How do you record your ideas?
Usually on my notes application on my iPhone. Or maybe a cocktail napkin.
What’s your current favorite tool or material to work with?
Right now, I am digging my Festool table - it has all these holes in the top so I can clamp or secure wood down to it and shape/rout/carve/handplane my wood. I was even using it for my lunch table until I spilled salad dressing all over it. I don’t eat on it anymore.
Wendy, age 4, 1956
What book is on your nightstand?
My friends Kerianne Quick and Adam Manley put out this magazine called Craft Desert - its a cool little handmade magazine.
Why is authenticity in design important?
It’s a mark that one makes in the world, or in your world, however large or small it is. It is also a record (or a reflection) of what was happening during the moment an object is designed and/or made. It would be interesting to examine artworks that have been made between March and December of this year: I find it hard to imagine that the pandemic would not have any effect, whether it be positive or negative, on the output of artists.
Wendy’s New Piece
Favorite restaurant in your city?
I love Izakayas (Japanese bar that serves food that is typically small plates) and we are fortunate to have several good ones in San Diego. The one I like is called Wa Dining OKAN in Clairemont Mesa. They make this gobo salad which is so good. The other one is called Tanuki in Kensington, which is closer to my house. But the sad thing is - the whole experience of eating at Izakayas is lost right now because of COVID. We order takeout now because we like to support the local restaurants we love but its just not quite the same as eating there.
What might we find on your desk right now?
A bottle of Isopropyl alcohol
A spray bottle of glass cleaner for my monitor
A giant glass of water
A tape measure
A mask
A couple of sketchbooks
Who do you look up to and why?
Arline Fisch is on that list: she is an artist (jeweler) and also my former professor from undergraduate school at SDSU. I was a young, naive, impressionable undergrad student and Arline was one of my first professors there. She was intimidating at first: a very formal, elegant, sophisticated New Yorker (I didn't know anyone from outside of San Diego back then!) and she was in all the magazines, and was showing/traveling all over the world and did this amazing work, and she was a very good teacher. She became a role model, and a mentor, one of those people that a young person might say, “I want to be just like her!”. Over the years she has been incredibly supportive and nurturing and she would take time to visit me in whatever city we would both happen to be in: Boston, New York, Washington DC, and London. She also taught me the importance of nurturing students and I would like to hope that I have followed her lead as a teacher in later years.
Wendy and some of her many students.
Wendy loves animals, by the way.
What’s your favorite project that you’ve done and why?
The Tag Project turned out to be that favorite project but with a very different outcome. It became less about the end product and more about the message which was always the intention but also because of the community that it brought together on so many levels. Prior to this, I did not know very many Japanese Americans, other than my family and a few colleagues and students. Most of the Japanese Americans in San Diego descended from those or actually were those who were forcibly incarcerated as the result of Executive Order 9066, and a large percentage of them were sent to Poston, a prison that was located in Arizona. When I reached out to the Japanese American Historical Society of San Diego for their guidance and resources related to my research, they all stepped up to offer their help in writing, stamping, tying and aging the tags. It took 4 years but I was able to replicate 120,000 tags representing all the individuals who were incarcerated in 1942. In the process I gained a whole new world of friends: many are long time members of the Japanese American community in San Diego.
One can never have too many friends.
What are the last five songs you listened to?
I have a very eclectic selection of music that rotates randomly on my Spotify - my age shows, too. This is what was playing while I was writing this.
A Whiter Shade of Pale - Procol Harum
Son of a Preacher Man - Dusty Springfield
If I Ain’t Got You - Alicia Keys
Proud Mary - Tina Turner
Power Show - Fela Kuti
Where can our listeners find you on the web and on social media?
I have a website (oooohh I better update it) at www.wendymaruyama.com, and my instagram is @wendymaruyama!
Clever is produced by 2VDE Media. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Music in this episode courtesy of El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.
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