Hidden treasures in San Joaquin Valley

 

Japanese Culture Flourishes in Rural San Joaquin Valley. Willard Clark's art museum in Hanford exhibits high-quality works from Japan

 

Cultural News, September 2005

 

 

Willard “Bill” Clark, founder of a Japanese art museum in Hanford, California

 

 

Daiitoku Myoo, a correction of Lee Institute (Currently the Clark Center): Daiitoku Myoo is one of the Five Wisdom Kings, said to be one of the finest Japanese Esoteric sculptures in the U.S. dating from the Kamakura period (1185-1333). It has inlaid rock crystal eyes to reflect and receive light in a dim temple when candles were placed in front.  The lightly carved drapery gives the illusion of actual cloth while the contorted facial features convey emotional intensity. Height 100 cm. (Photo courtesy of Lee Institute)

 

By Takeshi Nakayama

 

HANFORD, Calif. - Japanese culture is alive and well in rural San Joaquin Valley. Seeming to rise out of nowhere in an area dominated by cornfields, walnut groves and cattle ranches is the Lee Institute for Japanese Art at the Clark Center (currently the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture), a museum dedicated to artworks from Japan.

 

   Art enthusiasts Willard "Bill" Clark and his wife Elizabeth established the museum in Hanford in 1996. Located 40 miles south of Fresno, it sits on a 100-acre compound that includes Japanese-style buildings designed by Clark, a Japanese garden built by Kodo Matsubara in 1996, and a lotus pond.

 

   The institute now has around 1,250 works of art. "We are totally dedicated to Japan, so this makes us quite unique," Clark states. "As far as I know, the only other museum totally dedicated to works about Japan is the Morikami in Florida."

 

   Originally called the Clark Foundation for the Study of Art, it was renamed in 2000 to honor Dr. Sherman Lee, renowned American scholar of Asian art whose advice was instrumental in helping Clark collect quality Japanese art.

 

   Clark says he believes his museum has the fastest growing collection with the broadest coverage, from ceramics to bamboo to textiles to paintings from the eighth century to this year.

 

  According to Clark, the museum also has one of the major basket collections in the U.S., and the largest collection of works by noted contemporary ceramicist Sueharu Fukami of Kyoto, more than 60.

 

  "I like the art of Japan most of all," Clark declares. "They are inventive, artistic people who have taken much of their art inheritance from China and made it better.... Even the most simple bamboo sieve is beautifully made."

 

  When searching for Japanese art, Clark purchases what pleases him. "I look for something that turns the key in my ignition," he explains. "I like very serious art - old Buddhist paintings, byobu screens - and I also like funky or bizarre or humorous art. I find that the Japanese have more humor in their art than any other art I know in the world."

 

  The Hanford native, who goes to Japan two to five times a year, buys art from all over the world -- London, Tokyo, New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico. But, he says, the best place to buy Japanese art is Kyoto.

 

  "I love going to Japan," he adds. "I feel like I'm at home as soon as I get off the plane, even though I can't speak Japanese."

 

  Clark first became interested in Japan as a young boy of 12. "I went to a one-teacher, eight-grade country school that had a total of 20-25 students, and we were studying an old geography book... The page about Japan intrigued me, and I never lost that interest in Japan," he says.

 

  A fifth-generation Californian, Clark, 75, attended the University of California in Berkeley to study architecture, but later transferred to the UC Davis and graduated with a degree in animal husbandry.

 

   Serving as a Navy officer in the mid-1950s, he frequently flew to Japan from Hawaii. "That's when I really got into the art, architecture, people, food, gardens, everything about Japan," he recalls.

 

   With no art background except for one semester of art appreciation at UC Berkeley, Clark started collecting art when he was stationed in Hawaii, where he met and married his wife, Elizabeth. She was there teaching school on the same base. "We bought a few artworks, just a small amount and not of very good quality," he remembers.

 

   Returning to Hanford in 1958 and being the only son in the family, he had to run the family's then-350-acre dairy farm. "My father died suddenly and I had a new wife and a new baby, so I couldn't do much for a few years," he comments.

 

   Over the years, Clark expanded the farm to about 4,500 acres and made the herd one of the top 10 Holstein herds in the United States. In the early 1970s, he established a company that distributed large quantities of frozen bull semen for the artificial insemination of cattle. He had the exclusive rights to distribute 60 percent of all the bull semen produced in the U.S. to almost everywhere in the world.

 

   Selling off much of the farmland and later his bull semen company gave him the opportunity to expand his collection of Japanese art, with Dr. Lee as his advisor. "Dr. Lee was the greatest in the world for Asian Art," says Clark.

 

  The largest museum collections of Japanese art in America are in Boston, New York, the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago, Los Angeles (County Museum of Art), Seattle and San Francisco, Clark says, with the Lee Institute, which attracts about 5,000 visitors a year, in the top 10 or 15.

 

  Clark wants to expand the museum and make it a major center for Japanese art. To do so, he must raise money for the building and endowment through capital campaigns in Japan and the U.S.

 

  For information about the fundraising campaign or the museum, contact Willard Clark at the Ruth & Sherman Lee Institute for Japanese Art at the Clark Center, 15770 Tenth Ave., Hanford, CA 93230-9533; phone (559) 582-4915; fax (559) 582-9546; or visit www.shermanleeinstitute.org (currently www.ccjac.org).

 

 Takeshi Nakayama is a free-lance journalist who lives in Walnut, Calif. He has written articles for the Nikkei West, Nichi Bei Times, Gardena Valley News and many other publications, and is a former editor at the Rafu Shimpo.