To pass idle time (III), 2025

To pass idle time (III), 2025, Bronze cast, 10.5 × 28.2 × 19.4 cm

David Horvitz’s bronze four-legged figurines draw inspiration from Rev. Tamasaku Watanabe’s “camp carvings,” exhibited at the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe. Watanabe, a Japanese Christian minister from Hawaii, carved wood during his time in the Lordsburg and Santa Fe internment camps as a way to pass time. Horvitz’s figurines echo Watanabe’s original works in form, reflecting the deep resonance of these carvings as symbols of survival and resilience.

Horvitz, whose own grandmother, Kiyoko, was forcibly relocated to the Amache Internment Camp in Colorado, connects this history with his own family’s story. Horvitz involved his daughters in the process of replicating the figurines first in clay, before casting them in bronze. This act highlights the intergenerational transmission of memory and the critical importance of passing down stories of displacement and endurance.