Westwood artist exhibits in Washington, D.C.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2012
PASCACK VALLEY COMMUNITY LIFE
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Westwood artist Steve Cavallo will exhibit a series of paintings at George Mason University Gallery in Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C.
PHOTO COURTESY OF STEVEN CAVALLO
Westwood artist Steve Cavallo will exhibit his artwork in Washington, D.C.
The exhibit will feature seven artists, including filmmakers and photographers, focusing on Comfort Women as the theme.
'Comfort women' were women who were forced into sexual slavery during World War II by the government of Imperial Japan.
Cavallo designed the first U.S. memorial recognizing 'Comfort Women.'
He gained political momentum and support by working along with Palisades Park Mayor James Rotundo and the Korean American Voters Council.
The memorial – located outside the public library in Palisades Park — was dedicated in October of 2010 but did not receive wide recognition until this past May when three members of the Japanese Parliament came to Palisades Park requesting the memorial be removed.
http://blog.sva.edu/2009/10/false-comfort/
False Comfort
October 14, 2009
This fall, alumnus Steve Cavallo (BFA 1979 Illustration) traveled to South Korea as part of an artistic journey through the history of war and its tragic consequences. While working on his Playing Army series—in which he creates watercolor paintings of toy soldiers to depict scenes of violence and heartbreak caused by armed conflict—Cavallo learned about the WWII-era “Comfort Women.” “These were girls between 10 and 20 years old, abducted by the Japanese army during WWII,” he says. “Approximately 200,000 women were put in ‘Comfort Stations,’ where they were forced to serve 30 – 40 men a day.” He read an account of this systemic forced prostitution in a book called Silence Broken by Dai Sil Kim-Gibson (Mid-Prairie Books, 1999), and was moved to make contact with the few living survivors, many of whom live together in the House of Sharing, a site in Korea that serves as both a residence and museum of the history of sexual slavery.
After hosting a benefit for the House of Sharing at the Palisades Park Library in New Jersey, Cavallo went to the women’s home in September, presented them with the funds he’d raised, and began adding paintings about the Comfort Women to the Playing Army series. “The way that children play with action figures, the way kids see war, life and death is so casual—I killed you but you can be alive again,” says Cavallo. “These women’s lives were destroyed forever, and there was no restarting. They didn’t get to play over again.”
To view the complete set of Playing Army paintings, visit Cavallo’s Web site; to learn more about the Comfort Women, visit houseofsharing.org.
Images: Steve Cavallo, (top) Comfort Woman Action Figure—Comes Complete with 50 Japanese Soldiers, 2009; (bottom) Comfort Woman Nightmare Set, 2009.
http://www.northjersey.com/community/announcements/122639604_Local_artists_are__Facing_Reality_.html
‘Facing Reality’: Local artists’ exhibit features current events
THURSDAY, MAY 26, 2011
PASCACK VALLEY COMMUNITY LIFE
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Artists Shin-Young An of Cliffside Park and Steve Cavallo of Westwood will be exhibiting a series of oil paintings and watercolors during the month of May at BergenPAC's Intermezzo Gallery, on the second floor of the theater. "Facing Reality" is their first two-person show together. Steve Cavallo, whose watercolor is pictured above, spent the 1980s and 1990s as an illustrator after graduating from The School of Visual Arts in Manhattan before moving to the fine arts in early 1999. His work covers social issues from immigration to the Japanese Interments Camps of World War II, Korean Comfort Women as well as the brevity of life and the sorrows of death. Bergen PAC is located at 30 North Van Brunt Street in Englewood. For more information, call BergenPAC at 201-816-8160.
PICTURE COURTESY OF STEVE CAVALLO
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