Masumi Hayashi American, 1945-2006 Masumi Hayashi (born in Rivers, Arizona) is recognized for her panoramic photocollages -- pictures of space "remapped" to address cultural, political, and environmental concerns. She chooses as subjects toxic waste sites, abandoned industrial structures, and prisons, photographing with a rotating camera to produce dozens of small images. Commercially developed, the photographs are then reconfigured into large-scale grids. In 1995 Hayashi began work on a project to photograph her birthplace at the Gila River Relocation Center. Because the center was an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II, the subject is charged with both personal and political associations for the artist, who has expanded her single-medium approach to incorporate tape-recorded oral histories with the intent of translating the project onto cd-rom. Hayashi has worked as a freelance artist and graphic designer since 1977, operating her own company, Custom Picture Post Card Co. Educated at Florida State University (B.A., 1975; M.F.A., photography, 1977), she has taught at Loyola Marymount College (1983), the Cleveland Institute of Art (1986), and, since 1982, Cleveland State University. A regular participant and award-winner in the Cleveland Museum of Art's May Show, a regional juried exhibition, Hayashi has also received the Florida Craftsman Award (1976), an artist-in-residency at the J. M. Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin (1985), and a Cleveland Visual Artist's Award (1994). She has also been awarded a number of grants from the arts councils of Florida (1980) and Ohio (1988, 1989, 1995, 1996). Hayashi is active as a curator and lecturer, frequently participating in panel discussions across the United States. She lives in Cleveland. A.W.