Tacoma Ties
This is an “unofficial” member of our series, a large 3-foot-by-3-foot steamroller print we created at the 2017 Wayzgoose Festival in Tacoma, WA. The print was created from a hand-carved linoleum block.
This print references a shameful moment in our city’s history. In 1885, in response to the recent passage of the national Chinese Exclusion Act, the city of Tacoma, Washington forcibly expelled its Chinese residents. The “Tacoma Method,” whereby prominent white members of the community (including the mayor) marched behind these Chinese residents to chase them out of town, was copied by several other communities around the country. Today this event is memorialized by Tacoma’s Chinese Reconciliation Park, a waterfront park built in conjunction with sister-city Fuzhou, China.
Our print honors Tacoma’s thriving contemporary Chinese-American community with an illustration of a Chinese lucky knot. Inside the knot are the words Reconciliation, Honor, Flourish, and Prosper. Surrounding the knot are twelve actual nautical knot diagrams, symbolizing our ongoing ties to diversity, each other, and our unique place in the Pacific Northwest.
Year created
2017
At issue
The history of Tacoma’s Chinese-American community
Edition size
4 prints (2 in red, 2 in black)