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Fellows Sienna Ballou and Joseph Finkel are processing the papers of California-based artists Miriam C. and Ray C. Rice. Miriam Rice was well known for her work in mushroom dyeing and her husband, Ray Rice, was a mosaicist, painter, poet, and animator of short experimental films. 

Miriam’s papers include her research materials on mushroom dyeing, manuscript drafts for her publications Let’s Try Mushrooms for Color (1974) and Mushrooms for Dyes, Paper, Pigments and Myco-Stix (2007), photographs, correspondence, travel files, audiovisual materials, dye tests, teaching and workshop files, and files on her professional activity with the International Mushroom Dye Institute. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, Ray Rice had a key role in developing the "Art and Architecture" movement, which integrated sculpture, mosaic and painting with architecture. Ray’s artistic work in this collection include his writings, drawings and sketchbooks, photographs and slides, and films. Also included are correspondence files between Ray and Miriam, and records from Ray’s time in the US Army during World War II. 

The fellows are surveying, arranging, organizing, and describing the materials that the Rices created ranging from the 1940s to the 2000s, and will collaboratively curate and exhibit to open in June 2022.

Fellows Jacob Stone and Anny Mogollón are processing 45 boxes of the papers of the Yamashita family, donated by Karen Tei Yamashita. Yamashita is an author and Professor of Literature at UC Santa Cruz since 1997.

The Yamashita family was based in Oakland, California -- Kishiro and Tomi, who immigrated from Japan around the turn of the 20th century, along with their seven children born in the US: Kimi, Susumu, Chizuru, Hiroshi John, Iyo, Kiye Kay, and Isao Thomas. The family experienced forced removal and incarceration at the Tanforan and Topaz detention camps during World War II after the issue of Executive Order 9066. After the war, some family members returned to the Bay Area, while others dispersed to Chicago and elsewhere around the country. 

This family archive contains the papers of Karen Tei Yamashita’s father, Hiroshi John, and of his 6 siblings, their parents, and their extended family and friends. The collection contains family correspondence, photographs, albums and scrapbooks, artwork, oral history materials, film reels, and manuscripts, which all span from the 1910s through the early 2000s.

Materials from this collection were used extensively in Karen Tei Yamashita’s recent book, Letters to Memory.

The fellows are surveying, arranging, organizing, and describing the materials in the Yamashita family archive, and will collaboratively curate an exhibit to open in June 2022.