Please accept this submission to the Art and Georgia Democracy III
Exhibition.  Please notify me if there is anything missing or any problems.  I am
sending two separate files for ONE submission.  I had to do this in order to
prevent the files from being compressed :)  I have very low tech digital
capabilities--hope you can get an idea of the piece.  See in-text copy of
statement, below, for my submission "The Garden at Manzanar."

The Garden at Manzanar by Michele Martínez mixed media collage (sumi ink,
watercolor and silk on paper) w. 30" x h. 22" In February of 1942, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive order 9066, authorizing the
incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent.  The Garden at
Manzanar recalls California's Manzanar War Relocation Center, which housed
over 10,000 people between 1942 and 1945.  As child in the 1970s I heard
stories of the sudden relocation of friends and neighbors.  I visited the
remote desert site with my family.  In the War years, Ansel Adams created an
enduring photo essay of the camp.  One of Adam's photos shows a small, but
well-kept Japanese Garden just not far from the wooden barracks.  I see the
garden at Manzanar as a metaphor for a transcendent sense of dignity among
the interned.  I see people who look ahead not only times of peace, but to the
delivery of justice.


Sincerely,
Michele Martínez