American Pantry:

Soy Sauce

A diagrammatical analysis

- Emily Platzer -

meta information

contextual artworks

embodied ideas

watercolor on paper
- Canson Watercolor Cold Press 300g 220x305 mm
- q violet, cad red light, cad yellow light, hansa yellow light, phth blue, um blue
painted en plein air while camping at Stagecoach Reservoir at Stagecoach State Park in Steamboat Springs summer (June) 2024

Luc Tuymans: Still Life, 2002

Oil on canvas 347 x 500 cm

Jac Currie, Defend New Orleans, and Constance Risograph Editions: Gumbo, pre-2018?

Risograph 347 x 500 cm

Giorgio Morandi: Still Life, 1947

Oil paint on canvas 375 x 457 cm

This collection focuses on condiments in the United States that probably are in most people's pantries. These condiments are both nostalgic and comforting, and also touch on American ideals of a melting pot culture.
How do we cultivate, maintain, and evolve our traditions, who do we include as neighbors, friends and family, and can food create pathways to connections with each other? Or is it more comfortable to fold in cultural artifacts without including the people?

Kikkoman has made Japanese style soy sauce, or shoyu, since 1603. Company created from several family operations in 1917, and started going by Kikkoman in 1940.
During WWII, Japan attacked British and American territories in Dec 1941, including Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on 7 Dec 1941. Franklin D Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on 19 February 1942, authorizing "the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security", mostly Asian Americans, 2/3 of which were US Citizens.

Granada War Relocation Center aka Camp Amache located in Granada, CO
Camp Amache was an internment camp for people of Japanese descent from the west coast of the US, mostly citizens, operated from August 27, 1942 to October 15, 1945
Th work on preserving the site and it's documents was started in 1990 by the a group from the local high school, known as the Amache Preservation Society
Amache National Historic Site was formally established as part of the National Park Service on February 15, 2024

Lily Yuriko Nakai Havey: 18286, from the book Gasa Gasa Girl Goes To Camp published in 2014

watercolor