Label
Roger Shimomura was born in Seattle in 1939, educated at the University of Washington and Syracuse University, and he now works and teaches in Lawrence, Kansas. Shimomura's paintings and prints draw inspiration from Japanese art of the Edo period, particularly from woodblock prints, and from American popular culture of recent years. Enter the Rice Cooker juxtaposes these images in a tilted, cartoon-like space, colored with flat tints, which shifts ironically from one cultural pole to the other. This self-conscious irony is apparent in the artist's statement about his work:
Suddenly [while contemplating recent work] I saw the relationship between the merchandise I used to covet and draw from old Sears catalogues and the bizarre collections of objects that now fill my house. So did I see the relationship between misleading reproducations from art history books and my mom's old issues of Woman's Day, between the music of the John Coltrane Quartet and the Salvation Army Band...between Masterpiece Theatre and PeeWee's Playhouse, between an Oreo cookie and a Chiquita Banana and between Minnie Mouse and one of Utamaro's beauties. (artist statement issued by Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, 08/05/1999)