Retrospective Draws On The Diversity Of George Tsutakawa

``Eternal Laughter: A 60-Year Retrospective by George Tsutakawa,'' on view through Nov. 4 at the Bellevue Art Museum, 301 Bellevue Square; 454-3322; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. $3 adults, $2 students & seniors. Free Tuesday.

No one in the world has created more public fountains than Seattle artist George Tsutakawa. We count nearly 60.

But before he designed his first fountain at the age of 50, Tsutakawa produced a rich body of sumi painting, drawings and sculpture.

He celebrates his 80th birthday this year with a major retrospective exhibit currently on display at the Bellevue Art Museum that looks at all those parts of his career, and with a splendid book on his life and work by art historian Martha Kingsbury (University of Washington Press, $50; in paperback, $24.95).

``When I put together all this stuff I did over 60 years and review it, it's a source of amazement to me,'' Tsutakawa said. ``I don't know how I did it.''

His show is likely to amaze others as well. It contains nearly 200 artworks, beginning with a lifelike charcoal portrait of his grandfather, sketched while Tsutakawa was still in high school, and culminating in the self-contained ``Lotus Fountain'' he made especially for this exhibition, with water bubbling from a metal blossom into a catch basin.

Like many of Tsutakawa's creations, its lines are pure poetry.

``His life and art unfolded like a Japanese fan, each sharp and vivid plane sliding suddenly into view, all eventually forming a richly articulated unity,'' writes Kingsbury.

Tsutakawa received his first recognition as an artist in 1932, when Scholastic Magazine awarded him a $50 first prize for a linocut of a platter of herring. Among the award winners that year was a young artist in Texas, Morris Graves, who was soon to move to Seattle and become one of Tsutakawa's friends. The linocut, titled ``Iwashi,'' is in the BAM show.

``Zoot Suiter,'' a 1942 pastel of a dancer at a jazz club in Little Rock, is another early standout in the show. The sharp angular patterning of the dancer's body plays counterpoint to the soft curves of a woman's back behind him. That interplay of sharp and soft animates much of his sculpture as well, particularly the series of stacked forms he calls ``Obos.''

Begun in the mid 1950s, the Obos sculptures were inspired by rocks heaped by travelers over mountain passes in Tibet and Nepal. There, they function as three-dimensional prayers of thanks for safe travel.

In Tsutakawa's versions, smooth, dense shapes of wood and metal rise vertically, with a balance like an indrawn breath. They carry a sense of the ecstatic, held in poise.

It was from this series that Tsutakawa's fountains grew, beginning with a 1960 commission for the new Seattle Public Library building.

``That was almost a disaster for me,'' he said in an interview some years ago. ``I'd never done anything like that before - I didn't know how to proceed. I was going to cast it in bronze, then I found out that was prohibitive. I went instead to a fabrication method, which opened up a whole new field of possibilities.''

Pictures and models of many of his fountains, now found throughout the United States, as well as in Canada and Japan, are included in the BAM show.

``From 1960 on, I attempted to express the relationship between man and nature in my works,'' Tsutakawa said. ``My sumi-e drawings are a direct response to nature; my fountain sculptures are an attempt to unify water - the life force of the universe that flows in an elusive cyclical course throughout eternity - with an immutable metal sculpture.''

His newest fountain, still in process, is for Okayama, Japan - the birthplace of his wife, Ayame. It is a fitting balance, since his last fountain was for the Japanese city of Fukuyama, his family's home. Tsutakawa was born in Seattle.

``Every piece means something to me,'' Tsutakawa said of the BAM show, ``and the memories all come back. In spite of changes from year to year, there's something consistent in my work: my strong tie with nature and with people - especially with the Northwest.

``I always feel so thankful I was born here, and lived here most of my life.''

Although he initially hoped to have his retrospective exhibition in Seattle - a hope thwarted by the Seattle Art Museum's focus on its new building, and the Henry Art Gallery's long advance exhibition commitments - Tsutakawa acknowledges that he also has long ties with Bellevue.

``I exhibited at the Pacific Northwest Arts and Crafts Fair since its first year,'' he recalls. ``Some years, I did sculpture demonstrations. I had a small Army tent near a shoe store in the old Bellevue Square. Every year it seemed to rain, and my tent leaked. But I feel very close to Bellevue because of that.''

He adds an amusing tale of an early prize:

``In 1950 I received a small prize from the fair for a watercolor I did. We were invited to a reception at (Bellevue developer) Kemper Freeman's home. Ayame wore a kimono, and I had many drinks. We were very happy. When it was time to go home, I was driving so fast down Main Street that a cop stopped me. He gave me a $35 ticket. My prize was $35. So at the end of the party, I was even with Bellevue.''

``I have learned to drive since then,'' Ayame said evenly.

Tsutakawa said he's slowed down in the past year. Yet commissions continue to come in.

He's completing a memorial sculpture in black granite and metal for the late Sol Katz, which will be installed in the Seattle Repertory Theatre's lobby in time for its October opening. Tsutakawa, who is a University of Washington professor emeritus, was an old faculty friend of Katz's.

Kingsbury's book functions as a catalog for Tsutakawa's BAM show, but it is considerably more than that. A serious study of the artist's work, filled with color reproductions of his paintings, fountains and sculpture, it has lasting importance. So, we surmise, does Tsutakawa's art.

``Reading the newspapers every day is frightening,'' Tsutakawa said. ``When I read of earthquakes and wars around the world that have destroyed a lot of artworks, I feel very grateful that mine has survived.''

Amen to that.