Review: Masato Wayne Sumida’s intricate carvings lift the spirits

A little gem of an exhibition at the Armory Center for the Arts called up a memory of digging through my mother’s jewelry box and finding a delicate, cherry-red bird, perched on a branch. It was a robin, I think, carved in wood with a pin attached to the back. A gift from a friend of my mother’s, it was made in a World War II Japanese American internment camp.

Masato Wayne Sumida’s children recalled giving his creations away as gifts too. Bird carving was a popular pastime in the camps and Sumida, who was imprisoned in Poston, Ariz., and died in 1995, was a master of the form. There are about 100 examples on view in simple vitrines in the Armory’s upstairs gallery.

They include birds of all feathers — mallard ducks, cranes, cardinals, owls — as well as some whimsical squirrels and donkeys. Most are only an inch or two across and executed with startling detail and delicacy.

CHEAT SHEET: Fall arts preview

Sumida usually made several versions of the same bird; the scale, the angle of the wings or the coloration changed, but his attention to detail never wavered.

Absorption in such infinitesimal differences probably made all the difference in keeping one’s sanity under unjust imprisonment. And birds, after all, are powerful symbols of freedom. Sumida’s patient little sculptures remind us of art’s ability — in both the making and the viewing — to transport us.

Armory Center for the Arts, 145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, (626) 792-5101, through Jan. 26. Closed Mondays. www.armoryarts.org