About Richard Gurtiza: I found a picture of Richard, a Filipino American, in an exhibit at the Wing Luke Museum. He was director of Region 37 of the Inland Boatmen’s Union in Seattle, an affiliate of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), representing the mostly Filipino cannery workers in Alaska and down the Pacific Coast. The traveling exhibit was titled, “Journey for Justice: 223 Years of Asian Pacific American History in the Puget Sound,” at the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle in 2007. He came into our gallery at 500 Aloha Street and bought the print, and said that he liked it because it reminded him of the Yakima Valley (where Wapato in the title is located) where he grew up, as I did. |