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 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.
By her account, her father remarried but died in a displaced persons camp in California, leaving her and her brother homeless and orphaned by age 12.
[2] Tawana began construction of her Ark on August 8, 1982, using wood salvaged from abandoned buildings, connected with mortise and tenon joints.
[6] Photographer Camilo José Vergara said that Tawana was "the only folk artist in the Eastern United States to have built a work comparable in scope and conception to the famous Watts Towers of Los Angeles.
"[7] Didi Barrett of the Museum of American Folk Art described Tawana and the Ark as "compelling symbols of hope and human potential in a community that has suffered a troubled past.
A spokesperson for Mayor Sharpe James expressed such discomfort with her identity, when she was prominently opposing the city's plans for development.