100-year-old artist donates works to Goddard

Hide Oshiro, a painter, poet, book maker, and illustrator, from Newburgh, N.Y., presented hundreds of pieces of his art, including numerous sketches, to the small liberal arts college.

But Oshiro didn't talk about his art during his visit. He talked about life and how to live it.

"You know everything already, everything. And you've got everything you need," he told the Goddard staff in his heavily accented English.

That includes the sun, earth, space, air, plant kingdom, animal kingdom, beautiful society, he said. "We've got it; We've got it," said Oshiro, who was born in Hawaii and grew up in Japan.

He urged them to realize their connection to the universe, nature.

"The whole nature is breathing: the sun, the earth, the whole nature is breathing together," he said. ... "When you realize this, you come to maturity," he said, where every morning is beautiful, a stage that he said he has reached.

Oshiro witnessed the Pearl Harbor bombing, joined the U.S. Army, traveling around the country -- which he depicts in a pen and ink sketch of soldiers training out West -- and studied art in Paris.

A Goddard College graduate and painter, Carol Curri of Newburgh, N.Y., organized the donation.

Some of the collection will be on display at the college's small museum, which Goddard President Barbara Vacarr said was a wonderful spot for what she said has always been encourage at Goddard: the arts.