March 7th, 2025, 4:40pm
Dana Tanamachi, a New York-based artist and designer, learned from the art of his ancestors that he can “make something beautiful from what you have.” It is also something she learned from their challenges.
Her grandmother and great grandmother’s legacy, in particular, shows her “holdering” and means “to endure what appears to be incapacity and dignity.”
“The concept has become a heirloom that passes through my family’s head,” Tanamachi said during a March 7 keynote speech at Rowstech 2025.
Legacy of Patience
In 1942, after the attack on Hawaii’s Pearl Port, 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced to be removed from their homes in 1942 and placed in remote concentration camps despite no evidence of fraud.
“For three years they endured the harsh conditions, the loss of their rights and freedoms, and the deep injustice of being treated as enemies in their beloved homeland,” Tanamachi said.
However, the band of 18,000 were sent to concentration camps in the Arizona Desert. “Teachers, doctors, nurses, confusion hall chefs, farmers, etc. They began organizing themselves in the department. They began to build a sense of community and order in the midst of the chaos.”
Mitsuye “Mitzi” Nimura worked in the sewing department, but her mother took the knack for crafting and created art like a flower made from a small umbrella made of dough, toothpicks and tobacco wrappers.
“It’s always impressed me that she was able to make such beautiful things from the most common mediums, and even from scrap and trash,” Tanaka said. “I have always praised the elders for doing their best with what they had.”
Dana Tanamachi’s grandmother, Mitsi Nimura, married Tom Tanamachi, whom he met in a concentration camp. The couple did everything they could after being released from camp to create a happy childhood for the three boys despite limited resources.
Mitzi Tanamach took over his mother’s legacy by creating beautiful pieces from what is available.
“Reminiscing the dress made from potato bags and adding her own talent with embroidery and sequin details, she sets up an old pair of jeans, making handbags from the rest of the carpet scraps and denim skirts.”
Tanamachi added: I remember being so proud of her custom pieces.
“Boldness to create beauty” through dark situations
Since creating a popular Chalkreter installation in Brooklyn, New York in 2009, Tanamachi has been asked to create art for clients such as Target, Nike, Instagram, Time Magazine, O, and The Oprah Magazine.
The project’s Tanamachi is “probably the most proud” but was born out of her biggest pain.
While taking on the task of creating more than 500 artworks for the ESV lighting Bible, she was suffering from depression, “the duration of this project coincided with the most difficult period of my life up to that point.”
She said: “The beauty that adorns these pages came from some of the deepest pain I’ve experienced, and I wasn’t sure I could create something that I could do in the middle of what felt like an internal mess.”
However, Tanamachi found strength in the perseverance of his ancestors.
“It was difficult to be productive and harness my creativity in this dark season. Creating in the middle of a dark situation has been something I’ve seen before. I found it essential when there’s a template, a roadmap and the road in front of me was invisible. And you all know that I’m talking about two women whose blood flows through my veins that exist in my bones.
Leaning against their example, Tanamachi learns that she can do difficult things, adding her own legacy of patience to that of her loved one.
“And for now, I continued in the footsteps of women in my family, and their quiet strength gave them the audacity that makes them beautiful even in the midst of misery.”
