Viewing page 1 of 82

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[underline]]Interview with Mr. Yoshida[[/underline]]

G: For a number of years after you began teaching you really didn't think of yourself primarily as a performing artist, if one can use that term, but more as a teacher, and certainly you've been, it seems to me, a very inspiring kind of teacher because, as I mentioned, I've been struck by the number of people that you've taught you mention specifically that you were their teacher and mention your role with them and the success that they've had. So I think that you must exert a very powerful kind of influence on your students.
Y: I don't know.
G: (laughs) But certainly, I think, too that they hold you in a kind of awe often -- at least the younger people that I've had in art history classes, I've sort of picked up some of that attitude.
Y: I don't know that either.
G: But... you must also play a sort of casual role... it's been a long Chicago tradition, but nevertheless I can see all of the people you taught very uniformly showing that kind of thing, and that this is this very careful craftsmanship and kind of attention to what one reviewer called "the perfection of detail" that she sees as characterizing so much Chicago art, like (sounds like) Harry Ricky, who wrote about the Chicago scene in 1979. And I think some of that must come quite directly from you, and from other teachers as well, because many people who teach in the school certainly show some of that. But I had a feeling from my previous phone conversation too, when we talked about the current American show, that you must play a very casual role in that kind of attitude.