https://www.amazon.com/Masumi-Hayashi-Panoramic-Collages-1976-2006/dp/1942185200/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Masumi+Hayashi&qid=1579702023&sr=8-1
Masumi Hayashi was born on September 3, 1945 in the Gila River War Relocation Camp in Rivers, Arizona, one of the United States government's War Relocation Authority camps, where Japanese-Americans were placed in internment during World War II. The Gila River camp was in the Gila River Indian Reservation.
Masumi Hayashi grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California and graduated from Jordan High School. As an adolescent, she worked at her parents’ store, Village Market, on Compton Avenue. She attended UCLA and later went on to attend Florida State University in Tallahassee, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1975 and Master of Fine Arts degree in 1977.
Masumi Hayashi joined the faculty of Cleveland State University as Assistant Professor of Photography in 1982, and became a full professor in 1996. During her tenure at CSU, she received numerous awards, including an Arts Midwest, NEA fellowship in 1987, a Civil Liberties Educational Fund research fellowship in 1997, a Fulbright Grant in 2003, and Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council on three different occasions. She was awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize for Visual Arts in 1994.
On August 17, 2006, Masumi Hayashi and her neighbor, the 51-year-old artist and sculptor John Jackson were shot to death by Jacob Cifelli, a 29-year-old neighbor in their apartment building on Detroit Avenue in Cleveland's Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood, after she had complained to Cifelli about his loud music, which she had endured, and complained about, for months. Jackson (who also worked as a maintenance man at the apartment complex) was slain while attempting to assist Hayashi after she was shot. Cefili received a life sentence for the murders.
Masumi Hayashi is perhaps best known for creating striking panoramic photocollages, using smaller color photographs like tiles in a mosaic. Many of these large panoramic pieces involve more than one hundred smaller photographic prints; the rotational scope of the assembled collage can be 360 degrees or even 540 degrees. Much of her work explores socially uncomfortable spaces, including prisons, relocation camps, and Superfund cleanup sites.
Hayashi is a member of SPE and Art Foundation, Inc., a Tallahassee artists' cooperative.
