Chris and I visited the Pacific Maritime and Heritage Museum yesterday to attend a gyotaku (fish printing, or fish rubbing) demonstration conducted by artist Bruce Koike.
He has a good sense of humor, was interesting, and informative.
After the demonstration, I showed him the picture below, a picture of a gyotaku painting my mom had done in Japan in 1961 or 1962. (A painting that was so sun-bleached it was almost impossible to see, so I tweaked it in Photoshop to bring out the details and then added my own touches to it.)
I asked him what type of fish it was (rockfish). And then he called over Sachiko-san and asked her if she could read the characters in the lower right. She could! As she sounded them out, I realized she was saying my mother's last name. Apparently the characters are a phonetic rendition of the name Collister.
Bonus on three levels: an interesting demonstration, a revelation from the past, and a relaxing couple of hours on the Oregon coast.
©Carol Leigh
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