Artist George Tsutakawa was most famous for his avant garde bronze fountain designs. Born in Seattle, his family left Washington for Japan when he was 7. Not a particularly good student, he had a falling out with his father who wanted him to pursue a business career and returned to Seattle as a teenager. He studied art at the University of Washington receiving his BFA, MFA returning to teach there for most of his life.
After the war he began to experiment with melding the two cultures and to explore his cultural roots. He tried to incorporate the Japanese love of nature into his work. Speaking of his work he said "my fountain sculptures are an attempt to unify water—the life force of the universe that flows in an elusive cyclical course throughout eternity—with an immutable metal sculpture.” He completed about 75 of them during the course of his long career.
