Born in Japan, Hisako Hibi came to America with her parents as a teenager. When she and her husband were relocated in 1942 to the Topaz internment camp in Utah they became teachers at the art school founded by Chiura Obata. In 1945 they moved to New York, where she found work as an apprentice seamstress. Hisako Hibi continued painting for the next forty years and, after she returned to San Francisco in 1954, she exhibited her work in numerous shows including several one-person events.
Her art, and the informal journals and notes that she kept during those years, are the basis for this book. Hibi’s work while interned largely reflected her life as a young woman, wife, and mother, and her later work reflects the same keen sense of clarity about different subjects. Taken together, her paintings offer an insight into the daily life of a woman who would not abandon her art or betray her spirit.
Published in conjunction with the Japanese American National Museum
Hisako Shimizu Hibi (1907-1991) was born in a farming village near Kyoto, Japan, and moved to California at age fourteen. She studied western-style oil painting at the California School of Fine Arts and participated in annual exhibitions at the San Francisco Art Association. Her work was exhibited throughout her career, and by the end of her life she was well entrenched in the San Francisco Bay Area arts community.
