About: Kea Tawana

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Kea Tawana (c. 1935 – August 4, 2016) was an American artist known for creating the Ark, an 86-foot-long, three-story high ship she built in Newark, New Jersey, starting in 1982. For decades she had collected salvaged wood, stained glass, and other materials from abandoned buildings in the city's Central Ward, which had been hollowed out by poverty and riots in the late 1960s. She built the Ark on an empty lot; it was still unfinished when the city condemned it in 1987. Unable to find a new location, Tawana dismantled her ship in 1988. Tawana's Ark is classified as an example of visionary art and vernacular architecture.

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  • Kea Tawana (c. 1935 – August 4, 2016) was an American artist known for creating the Ark, an 86-foot-long, three-story high ship she built in Newark, New Jersey, starting in 1982. For decades she had collected salvaged wood, stained glass, and other materials from abandoned buildings in the city's Central Ward, which had been hollowed out by poverty and riots in the late 1960s. She built the Ark on an empty lot; it was still unfinished when the city condemned it in 1987. Unable to find a new location, Tawana dismantled her ship in 1988. Tawana's Ark is classified as an example of visionary art and vernacular architecture. There are numerous questions about Tawana, her personal and gender identity, and her past. She told people in Newark that she was born in Japan, to a Japanese mother and an American father, who was a civil engineer, and came with him and her brother to the United States after World War II. She said her mother and sister had been killed in a bombing raid in Japan. But her obituary said that she was born on an Indian reservation and ran away at age 12. She worked for some years at a variety of itinerant jobs in the South before settling in Newark in the 1950s. There she worked for decades in a range of construction trades. After being forced to dismantle her Ark, she moved to Port Jervis, New York in western Orange County. She lived there for her remaining years. (en)
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  • Kea Tawana (c. 1935 – August 4, 2016) was an American artist known for creating the Ark, an 86-foot-long, three-story high ship she built in Newark, New Jersey, starting in 1982. For decades she had collected salvaged wood, stained glass, and other materials from abandoned buildings in the city's Central Ward, which had been hollowed out by poverty and riots in the late 1960s. She built the Ark on an empty lot; it was still unfinished when the city condemned it in 1987. Unable to find a new location, Tawana dismantled her ship in 1988. Tawana's Ark is classified as an example of visionary art and vernacular architecture. (en)
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  • Kea Tawana (en)
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