I am honored to be a part of the group exhibition Radiant Fibers, currently showing in the Natalie and James Thompson Gallery at San Jose State University. The Radiant Fibers exhibition features work that combines traditional crafts with emerging technologies. From illuminating large-scale installations to a wall of e-textile swatches, viewers will get a peak into the future of craft & technology from former residents of electronic textile camp.

I created an installation called Body Talk specifically for this exhibition. Body Talk is a multi-layered projection-mapped experience with felted foot controllers to trigger different video clips of body gestures (my own). The installation considers the intricacies of body language and communication, and through isolating gestures and expressions from their full physical context, asks the question: can we still decipher the intended message? I invite the viewer to interact with the work as they contemplate this question.

The exhibition is currently up through the end of this week, Friday, Oct 11th. Please check it out if you are in the Bay area! I appreciate the support as always.

I was recently chosen as a winner of the Knight Foundation’s 2023 New Work art grant for Detroit! The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has long been funding artists and art non-profits in Detroit, and their New Work grant specifically funds art projects that incorporate technology. I’m honored to be selected as one of this past year’s recipients along with a talented group of artists. Read more about the Knight Foundation’s grant and the other winners’ projects here: https://knightfoundation.org/challenges/knight-new-work-2023/

My art project funded by the Knight Foundation is an upcoming exhibition called Threads of Passage: From Vietnam to America to coincide with the 50th anniversary of end of the Vietnam War in 2025. The exhibition will include interactive textile and video installations that will feature stories of Vietnamese boat refugees, their harrowing journeys to freedom, and the stories of the American people who helped them adjust and succeed in their newly adopted country, providing a window into a traumatic history for the Vietnamese-American community as well as a story of cross-cultural friendship that could present a path forward in this time period of growing racial and cultural division in America. The above photo is one of many warm memories my family has had with our Mennonite sponsors in rural Maryland who helped my family adjust to American life when they first arrived.

Last year, I traveled to Vietnam to document my parents’ journey from Saigon to America. My parents and older brother jumped on a boat the day the communists took over the city. Many people tried to flee that day and jumped on boats without knowing if they would make it out alive. The video still above was taken at the seaport where my parents escaped Vietnam. This was the most emotional video shoot of the entire trip. My mother started crying as she recalled the heartbreak of leaving while knowing she would never see her parents again. Both her parents passed away before she was allowed to return back to Vietnam in the 1990s. At the time of the video shoot, I wondered if the project was worth triggering my parents’ traumatic memories of the loss of their families, country, and culture, but ultimately, I thought of my nephews and niece growing up in America. This next generation will be even further away from my parents’ story. I feel that it is my duty to document this difficult history now so that future generations will remember the struggles and sacrifices my parents’ generation endured for us.

The generous grant provided by the Knight Foundation means I will be able to purchase the necessary equipment for my installations, such as projectors, speakers, media players, electronic components, microcontrollers, etc. I have a budget for travel to record more footage of stories from Vietnamese refugees across the country. I’ll also have funds to hire a machine learning specialist to help with one of the interactive installations as well as a budget to (shock!) pay me for my time in creating the art. I have mostly self-funded my previous art projects, so this grant will push my work further than I could have achieved on my own. I’m super grateful to the Knight Foundation, and I can’t wait to share the process of making these installations on my blog! I’ve also created Instagram and Facebook pages specifically for this exhibition, which I hope to travel to a few other cities in America with large Vietnamese populations.

Feel free to follow this exhibition if you’d like:

Threads of Passage Instagram

Threads of Passage Facebook

Years ago, I used to volunteer at a natural dye garden in the Rockaways in Queens. I would bike down there from Brooklyn, work in the garden for a few hours, take a dip in the ocean, and bike back home. I often dreamed of having my own house and yard with a natural dye garden. Here in Detroit, my dreams have become a reality as I’m in year 2 of growing color and have no plans of scaling down.

Last year, I only grew Japanese indigo, marigolds, and madder. The roots of madder are what you get the red color from and can take up to 3 seasons before you can harvest. Moving to Detroit from Brooklyn was a harsh transition, especially during the lonely Covid period, so planting the madder felt like I was committing to my new life. I literally put down roots!

This year, I expanded the dye garden even more, growing weld, cosmos, Hopi sunflowers, dyer’s coreopsis, marigolds, Japanese indigo, black eyed susan, calendula, dyer’s chamomile, double black hollyhock, madder, murasaki, and black knight scabiosa all from seed. I started the seeds indoors under grow lamps and then transplanted them in the garden after the last frost. I bought most of my seeds from Grand Prismatic Seed except for the Japanese indigo seeds, which I sourced from the indigo masters Rowland & Chinami Ricketts in Indiana. Their website has a lot of helpful guidance on growing indigo.

Compared to the previous year, this year’s harvest was abundantly joyful, and I have a freezer stocked with flowers I will continue to use until next season’s bounty. What will I be doing with my precious dye blooms? With the indigo, I will dry and process the leaves to make an indigo vat (a future blog post!). Flower heads are particularly beautiful in bundle dyeing where you place the flowers on cloth, roll it up tightly, and then steam it to create random splashes of color. Mostly, I will dye yarn for weaving and silk and cotton fabric for quilting. With the remaining dye liquid, I will make lake pigments for homemade inks & paints to be used for marbling.

Winter is the perfect time to reflect on the previous year’s garden and be honest with yourself about what worked and what didn’t. I grew weld from seed, but none of them survived transplanting. Next year, I will be planting the seeds directly in the bed. Dyer’s chamomile did not provide a robust yield this year, and with the buds being so small, I may not plant them again. If I do, I will move them to a different part of the garden to see if they do better in a new location. I love the delicate beauty of dyer’s coreopsis, but their tiny blooms are kind of a pain to harvest. The Hopi sunflowers grew tall and mighty, but the neighborhood squirrels performed death-defying moves to get the seeds before I could.

Which plants did I love to grow the most? Japanese indigo has always been a hardy staple for me. It even grew well on the fire escape off my Brooklyn apartment (don’t tell my previous landlord). I’m in love with the bright orange cosmos and will be expanding a bed for them next year. There are so many plants that will give you a yellow color, but I believe the enormous and dense marigold heads give you the most bang for your buck. The fact that they deter pests for your vegetable garden is an added bonus. Black knight scabiosa was particularly gorgeous to grow, and they look amazing in a bouquet as well. It’s my goal next year to expand the dye garden with flowers that can also work as cut flowers. I love bringing the garden into my home!

There is perhaps nothing more joyous to me than sharing a home-cooked meal with family. The first thing my mother says whenever I visit is “What do you want to eat? I’ll make all your favorite dishes.” Food is how we express our love. Some of my favorite childhood memories include rolling eggrolls with my mother, or seeing my mother get together with her friends to make bánh tét for the Tết festival (Vietnamese lunar new year). The many hours it takes to make bánh tét (a sticky rice cake with mung beans and pork belly wrapped in banana leaves) allow for a lot of bonding time that to me, is as satisfying as the food itself.

Most Westerners know Vietnamese food from the popular soup phở or sandwich bánh mì, but there are so many more delicious regional dishes that are less known and harder to find, especially with the limited availability of Asian ethnic food where I live in Southeast Michigan. In Detroit, I mostly make Vietnamese food at home to avoid the inevitable disappointment of not-Mom’s cooking. In Vietnam, I can eat to my heart’s delight in Saigon, a street food paradise. My favorite thing to eat in a night market? Snails! Particularly the spotted kind called ốc hương. Typically at a seafood market or restaurant, you pick your seafood, let them know how you want it cooked (steamed, sautéed, or grilled), and choose what type of sauce or toppings you want it coated in (tamarind sauce, coconut curry, chili and garlic, peanuts and green onion, etc.).

Another favorite dish difficult to find in the U.S. is mì quảng from central Vietnam. Most people don’t know that phở originates from North Vietnam and that the other regions of Vietnam have their own soup specialities like bún bò Huế from the city of Huế. Mì quảng has wide noodles, a low turmeric broth, meat and/or seafood, lots of herbs, peanuts, and a big piece of sesame rice cracker (bánh đa mè).

Exploring Saigon on foot allows for the ability to stumble onto hidden gems. One of the silver linings of the French occupation was the introduction of coffee into the culture, and you can now find a café on almost every corner. I love taking a long walk and finding a new café for a refreshing glass of iced coffee any time of day. Tucked away in an alley by some train tracks was this massive oasis replete with plants, a water feature, and generous seating.

It’s safe to say I am obsessed with flowers. Whether I’m growing them for dyes or just for beauty, I love to have them around. In Vietnam, there is a particular flower called bông giấy (also known as bougainvillea). The name translates to “paper flower” because the leaves are very thin like paper. It comes in many colors, but I find pink to be the most vibrant and popular in Vietnam. You will often see mature plants cascading over balconies or fences, providing a gorgeous pop of color that will brighten your day.

Vietnam is essentially a long, slender coastline, and I would be remiss to leave without heading to one of the many famous beaches. My parents and I flew to Da Nang in central Vietnam to spend some time on the long stretch of white, sandy beaches the city is known for. In the distance, you can see the Lady Buddha Da Nang statue, which is the tallest one in Vietnam and said to protect fishermen at sea.

One of the stranger tourist attractions I’ve been to in Vietnam is a place called Bà Nà Hills high in the mountains just west of Da Nang. This resort in the mountains requires a long cable car ride to get to and was originally built in the 1910s by French colonialists. In recent years, it has expanded into a theme park and is a popular place for tourists as well as newlyweds looking to stay in a romantic European setting. Also in the same space is a Vietnamese Buddhist pagoda, so it’s an odd juxtaposition of early 20th century French architecture with Vietnamese religious architecture side by side.

The one thing Vietnamese know how to do is relax. Judging by the number of hammock rest stops on the side of the road, the work hard, play hard culture lives on in Vietnam. We take a long siesta for lunch, and I quickly got accustomed to my afternoon nap. Many of my Vietnamese friends were shocked by my descriptions of work life in America. The desire for work/life balance is strong in Vietnam, even if you are not well off. More than the food, crafts, or beaches, I try to remember the mindset and joie de vivre of the Vietnamese people until I can return again.

Vietnam is a sensorial place. The rich colors and scenery, delectable smells, and cacophony of motorbikes and lively chatter on the streets can be overwhelming to some. But to me, it feels like home. I am what they call Việt Kiều, or overseas Vietnamese, having been born and raised in America. My family were refugees from the war who arrived in America in 1975. We have since returned to Vietnam several times to visit relatives, and for me, each visit is an opportunity to dig deeper into my heritage and understand my parents more fully. This past February, I spent a glorious month in Vietnam for the first time in 12 years.

My father was raised in Saigon, the largest city in Vietnam, and when we visit, this is where our home base is. Many days are spent buying groceries at the open-air market, riding around town on a motorbike, singing karaoke in bars, and eating various seafood at the night market.

For this particular visit, I was determined to learn the delicate art of Vietnamese embroidery. When I was younger, my parents brought back large embroideries of Vietnamese scenes, which still hang in their living room today. My favorite one depicts a countryside scene with thatched houses, water buffalo, wandering chickens, and a slinky river running through it all – very similar to the rural rice paddy community my mother grew up on in the Mekong Delta. I am still mesmerized by the fine details like silver thread running through the river to simulate the shimmer of water.

As a textile artist, I am no stranger to embroidery techniques and have even taught them in the past. But the high craftsmanship and detail of Vietnamese embroidery was another level for me. I found an excellent embroidery teacher in the neighborhood we were staying in Saigon: http://daymaytheuhongtham.com/. Cô Hồng Thắm has been embroidering with thread and beads since she was a little girl and runs her own embroidery studio, where she passes along this knowledge to others and also does custom work.

Vietnamese hand embroidery is a unique blend of Chinese embroidery and French embroidery techniques due to the years of colonization and occupation by both cultures. From Chinese silk embroidery, the Vietnamese embraced the satin stitch and seamless blending of colors as well as the common depiction of flora and fauna. From the French influence, European embroidery techniques such as the French knot and bullion knot became incorporated into the Vietnamese tradition. Fun fact: the history of knotted embroidery actually dates back to ancient China, where it was used strictly for the royal class in the Forbidden City, home of the Emperor. As a result, this exclusive knot, a precursor to the French knot, became known as the “forbidden knot”, or now more commonly known as the Peking knot.

For about three weeks, I spent every day embroidering for 6-8 hours, mostly flower and plant motifs. It was fun to learn the Vietnamese words for embroidery stitches I already knew and new terminology for ones I didn’t. One technique I learned is to use a large hoop and weight on the hoop at the edge of a table. Most embroiderers I know in the West hold the embroidery hoop with one hand and use the needle with the other. By placing the hoop at the edge of a table with a weight on it, you can use both hands, which allows you to pass the needle through the fabric from one hand to the other and speed up the embroidery process significantly. This small change was a revelation to me and made the endless satin stitches much easier.

This is a close-up of one of the many flowers I embroidered. Throughout my practice, I slowly built up the number of colors I blended together. Each flower petal has five different colors blended together with one strand of thread at a time. All in all, the study was painstaking but beautiful work. I have been working on an art installation regarding my family’s migration to America, and I plan to incorporate these new skills into the installation. If you’re interested in learning more about Vietnamese embroidery, there is a gallery called XQ Embroidery that represents many artisans: http://xqvietnam.com/.