An American Artist In Tokyo

AN AMERICAN ARTIST IN TOKYO
By Michiyo Morioka Seattle, WA, The Blakemore Foundation-University of Washington Press: 2007 709.2 MOR

Frances (Wismer) Blakemore (1906-1997) was born in Illinois, the daughter of German immigrants. Her mother had been an art teacher, her father ran a successful restaurant business. When George Wismer won eighty acres in a lottery, the family moved to Spokane, Washington. Frances worked her way through the university, so it took her ten years to earn her degree in art, but she also used the time to get commissions for commercial art work that led to her involvement in the Northwest Printmakers Association, gaining exposure for her art. After her graduation in 1935, France surprised her family for marrying a graduate student of literature, Glenn Baker. It was Glenn’s facility in languages that took them to Japan on a ‘honeymoon’ that lasted for five years.
The young couple lived in Tokyo, where the fashion-conscious Frances drank in the beauty of traditional Japanese textiles and ceramics, as well as continuing to explore new ways of print-making. Japanese bath was an elegant version of a traditional custom. Purse-Seiners is a cubist print of fisherman working with their nets, a style she had employed since her school days. The worsening tension between Japan and the United States led Frances to sail for Honolulu in July of 1940. She was still there when the Pearl Harbor attack took place.
During their years in Japan Frances had become fluent in Japanese and immersed herself in the culture. She had seen the political situation from the inside and was torn by her sympathy for the Japanese people, most especially for her close friends. She went to work for the Office of War Information as a result of all these experiences and her propaganda leaflets are not only artistically accomplished they reflect her respect and understanding of the consequences of war for ordinary citizens.
Eager to return to Japan when the war ended, the Blakes were exceptional candidates for the Army of Occupation. Frances was devastated to find that all her Japanese friends had disappeared without a trace. Her art work at the time illustrates the cultural clash: while Jeeper’s Japan attempts to educate the Americans about local customs and practices, it also shows the terrible toll taken on the Japanese people. When players seem a bit off key, They’re absorbing calories vicariously shows a night club scene where Americans dine and dance while the Japanese musicians are gaunt and pale. A sharp observer of the complex social relations between American personnel and their Japanese ‘hosts’, she portrayed awkward Americans encountering the impeccable manners of the Japanese.
Typist At Work is a picture of a second generation Japanese American woman who returned to work on the Allied reconstruction of the country. The cartouche in the upper left corner contains the word ‘Democracy’. The smokestack seen through the window is a sign of new industry,
After marrying her second husband, an American attorney, Thomas Blakemore, in Japan, Blakemore continued to experiment with the various trends in art. For many years then Blakemore was involved in a modern art gallery in Tokyo that became internationally respected. She returned to Seattle, due to her husband's’s ill health, spending her last decade there.