February  2002
  Artist of the Month:

Peter Stanhope Arakawa
 Both sides of my family have luminary backgrounds. My mother's grandfather was a court calligrapher for the emperor of Japan, and both my father and his father were architects. Two buildings and a bridge they designed still stand on the island of Hilo, Hawaii. One of the buildings has been put on the national registry of historic buildings. My father served as an infantryman in WWII and both sides of my family were interned during the war. I am a fourth generation Japanese-American.

            My creative abilities started when I was a young boy developing both my drawing skills and constricting plastic and balsa models. I attended the Cate School for Boys at the age of fourteen and studied art with Barnabay Conrad, a contemporary of John Steinbeck. In 1975-1976, I attended Hamshire College, and was fortunate to have Arthur Honer, a disciple of Joseph Albers, as my professor in color theory. I left Hamshire College to travel back to the west coast and ended up living in Berkeley, CA. I attended CCAC taking western calligraphy with Byron McDonald. I reentered college attending the Mason Gross School of Arts, Rutgers University.

            My first professional exhibition was with Gary Snyder in 1986, whose company Snyder Fine Art was located in Princeton, NJ. Since that time I have shown at galleries, colleges, and museums through the state of New Jersey. The highest achievement for my work came in 1994 when I was awarded a Pollock-Krasnwer Painting Fellowship.