PATRICK RYOICHI NAGATANI

There are moments of great poignancy in life, when the timing of events seems weirdly coordinated by some agency whose presence we can only sense, and never see. "Serendipity" seems too casual a word to describe what I'm talking about; "providence" and "destiny" too heavy and determinative...

Here's what happened:

I returned home a couple of days ago to find a package awaiting me. Odd, because I had ordered no books and was expecting no review copies. Curious, I opened the package up to find a copy of the beautifully presented book, "The Race: Tales in Flight,"

by an old friend, Patrick Ryoichi Nagatani, who had sent it to me as a gift. I have not yet had the time to read it, but at first glance it seems that the book is a "novel"--I use the quotes advisedly--that combines word, narrative and image in a way that is familiar to me through Patrick's visual, photographic work.

A truly wonderful gift. But here's the thing: I am no longer able to thank my friend for his generosity. I had heard, just the day before opening it, that Patrick had finally succumbed in his years-long battle with cancer.

I mourn the loss of a friend with whom I had always rewarding, but too infrequent connection during his life. Having followed his work for some years, I was delighted when he was brought on as faculty in the Art Department at Loyola Marymount University, where I was Dean at the time. And was delighted to renew our friendship one time in Albuquerque after he moved to New Mexico to teach at the university there; and again in Los Angeles, on the occasion of his landmark 2011 retrospective, "Desire for Magic" at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

Patrick's parents met in one of those infamous internment camps during World War II, and throughout his life he honored his Japanese heritage in his life and work. That history and that heritage hovered somewhere very close to his soul and was reflected in his work as an artist in a seriousness of purpose, a dedication to both beauty and depth of content and, let's say it, a compassionate humanity that saw something meaningful and important is everything he laid his eyes on, everything whose enigmatic presence in the world his camera recorded.

I'm sure that I'll have more to say about his book, when I find the time to sit with it with the quiet attention that it calls for. In the meantime, these words will have to suffice as my "thank you" to a man of enormous grace and generosity of spirit.