On Dec. 8, 2024, La Sierra University’s Brandstater Gallery hosted an exhibition titled “Saudade” featuring works by the painting workshop students. I had the pleasure of interviewing one of the contributors in Honors, fourth-year art major and pre-dentistry student Nobuyuki Yano.
KJ: What does Saudade mean?
NY: We decided on the name after we all made pieces so it’s a Brazilian/Portuguese word that the feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia, basically a common theme in our pieces was a sense of nostalgia.
KJ: How do your pieces reflect that theme?
NY: I think just nostalgia for an environment I grew up in, like how I reminisce all the little things that made that environment feel like home. Whether that be like in one of my pieces there’s me as a kid watching my grandma cook food to pieces that show how the food ended up on the table so like where it comes from like from taro patches or like going out to fish for fish, all that, how food is a process that takes a whole community for it to end up at your table.
KJ: How do the pieces within the Saudade collection compare to the other artwork you do?
NY: I don’t know I just got to be all over the place when it comes to doing like art mediums but I feel like in my other classes I’m constantly exploring the themes of things relating to back home whether that be urban legends or stories that my parents have told me or do you know showing what Palau looks like so there’s definitely that big theme of being Pacific Islander and also I guess the difference between this collection and my other pieces is that I took more time to research and actually do all the composition and get all the references for all my art pieces in the collection, whereas the other pieces I did that same process but it was more on a whim and just fun.
KJ: How did you end up participating in Saudade?
NY: I had to do it because I took painting workshop, which meant I had to participate in the gallery. It was a requirement for me to pass my class. Workshop students have already taken the class once before, so the expectations for them are higher.
KJ: What were your expectations for the gallery? How were you feeling as it approached?
NY: I just knew I wanted to make a lot of pieces. I was getting nervous as it approached because I was procrastinating on my pieces so I had to get like five or six of them done a few days before the actual showing date. I was stressed. I was STRESSED.
KJ: What was it like to see your artwork in a gallery and host an artist talk?
NY: It was an unbelievable experience. I never expected to be showing my artwork and also just like experiencing what that feels like. I felt like while we were doing the artist talk, it was a fun way to tell people more lore about my paintings and answer a few questions as to why I did a few things the way I did. It also like made me feel like a practicing artist because my art was displayed in an actual space dedicated to art. I don’t know, it was almost uncanny. We also had a professional practicing artist come in, and she saw the post on Instagram. She was like, “Wow, that was like I really liked your pieces, particularly this one,” about the one with my grandma. I think that was really interesting in a way that I thought to myself, “Oh, like actual practicing artists are coming and like seeing my work and giving me a thumbs up on it.”
KJ: What are your next steps as an artist?
NY: Keep creating. I have my honors scholarship project I’m currently working on. I did interview with a Criterion writer on my project in particular. I’m doing woodcuts and hopefully painting more and I’ll be exploring things like my cultural identity as Pacific Islander and also just it’s like how that relates to my sexual orientation and identity. So we’ll see how that turns out.
Many thanks to Nobuyuki Yano for sharing his experience!
—Katie Jang, Class of 2025: English Literature/Pre-dentistry
To follow along Yano’s work: