Art-In-Place 5/20 - 6/20. Holiday and weather permitting.

#34. 'Mardi Gras Beads Day/Night with floaters'.  61" x 69".  Covid-19 half price sale.  $400.00

20% goes to Arts for Illinois Relief Fund.
https://terrainexhibitions.org/              https://www.cnlprojects.org/artinplace

Masks for Covid-19. Glad to be able to improvise and provide when needed. Update: passes Bill Nye's test. Gosh when I look back on this...we are so innocent.

a pandemic when no one knows who is infected; everyone should wear masks not to protect themselves but to protect others. If they did the same then everyone gets protected.

#53. 'Route 66 With Curry (stereotypes).' 2020.2 @ 53" x 75" stretched. Indonesian batik, American fabric. Indonesian character is probably from a Wayang Kulit Hindu epic like the Ramayana. Western prints are of stereotypical, "cowboys and indians". NFS

                                                 

I've noticed more Asian Indians owning and clerking at motels and gas stations wherever the interstate freeway routes go.  One gas station even offers lunch that include curry stews and stock Asian spices and mixes among their limited shelves. People are moving and settling in America all over, all the time. 

I imagine what it would be like as a SE Indian boy growing up here with a diet of Westerns that include old American legends of the "wild west" mixed with family legends from SE Asia.

Working on 'Route 66 with Curry (stereotypes)'. Started with reference to current truck-stops where you can fill your stomach with asian Indian food and your truck with diesel. But, with these prints its also about legends. Don't you think? (See...#53 'Indian and Cowboys'. Experiment of not building from the center. Very unwieldy.)

#52. 'Ming Ho / Munn Haw (Beatrice)'. 77" x 77". Chinese brush painting, Japanese folklore, and Hawaiian flora designs. I knew mom as 'Beatrice' all my life. She was in her 90's when I took her to get a state ID. Only then did I find she was born 'Munn Haw' (Cantonese) and changed her name to 'Ming Ho' (Mandarin) when she married. In elementary school she was told to go home and come back with an English name. (1920's Territory of Hawaii.) NFS

It was serendipity to return from seeing Li Huayi paintings at the Honolulu Art Museum and find among my hoard of fabrics a cloth decorated with prints of Chinese brush paintings. How it got to me in the mid-west I haven't a clue. It was printed in Honolulu too. 

'Munn Haw' (Cantonese), 'Ming Ho' (Mandarin) each translate to 'Day & Night' or 'Sun & Moon', poetically meaning 'Bright'. Add one more character for 'River' and it refers to the Milky Way. 

Ming Ho

Munn Haw

                           

I thought I may have trouble getting Dad's state ID, especially since he had dementia, but it was Mom who had a hard time. The name on her social security card didn’t match her old drivers license, or her birth certificate. The clerk sent us to get her marriage certificate from another office, perhaps that would help, but it only brought into play a third name! 

Mom was told to come back with an English name when she started elementary school. The teachers (haoles/caucasians) couldn't handle all these "foreign" names. And so all my life I knew her as 'Beatrice'. Her Cantonese name 'Munn Haw' is recorded on her birth certificate in 1918. She changed her name to ‘Ming Ho’ (Mandarin) when she got married but only on the wedding certificate. (Why? Because it's prettier!) The trick was to come up with an ID that would satisfy all these different documents.  

Everyone has layers of identity. Mom could dress up in a silky red cheong sam and be 'Ming Ho', while also 'Beatrice' in a floral Hawaiian print dress as a Kindergarten teacher. 'Ming Ho', 'Munn Haw', 'Beatrice'...she will always be Mom to me. 

https://womanmade.org/artwork/betty-jane-lau-2/

'Truth As a Contested Concept' at Women Made Gallery 11.1.2019

https://womanmade.org/truth-as-a-contested-concept/

#38. 'Hansel & Gretel in American Woods' 2018.1 49" x 49" American cloth, Aloha print, Costco Indonesian sarong. 800.

 

Sattadhatu Sutta, SN 14.11

#51. 'Mauna Kea / Powehi' 51" x 46" 2019.8 Tutuvi prints and Hawaiian cloth NFS

I wove this while TMT (a proposed new telescope on Mauna Kea) was being blocked by Hawaiians who declare the Mountain as sacred. 

What would Queen Liliuokalani do? Her islands were stolen in 1893. This is very much a part of the protest.

Added 2020:  

I left my home in Hawaii a long time ago. Because of the pandemic it is now a risk to travel back to visit family and friends. This new reality has me confronting the issue: is my “home” a specific geographical spot on earth? Do I identify with my past community if I am not currently living in that community? I was born and raised in Honolulu, do I still consider Hawaii my home?

I wove ‘Mauna Kea/Powehi’ during a time of political and spiritual turmoil. Some Hawaiians regard Mauna Kea as their original spiritual home. Some scientists want to build a telescope on the mount to find another 'Powehi', i.e. a black hole. The name ’Powehi’ comes from a Hawaiian origin chant meaning “an embellished dark source of unending creation”. Hawaiian protestors want to save their mountain they consider home. Scientist want to search for a black hole that all matter is pulled through; a portal perhaps leading to our ultimate home. 

One definition of ‘home’ is where you go to replenish yourself. ‘Home' is not only a place but a state of mind.

'Axis Mundi'

Working on #51 Mauna Kea / Powehi while controversy swirls.

#50. 'Powehi / Rainbow' 84" x 68" Made of hawaiian and western materials. Started 4/2019 - Finished 7/2019. Read links to find out more. 900.

'Kumulipo', a Hawaiian origin chant.

"The current of time when the earth turned hot around

The current of time when the firmament turned counter

The current of time when the sun stood beshadowed

To illuminate the moon

The time of the night of the Pleiades

The ocean-floor slime is what gave origin to earth

The origin of the dark was dark

The origin of the night was night

The deep darkness, the deep darkness

The darkness of the day, the darkness of the night

Night only indeed!..."

Copied from 'Chanting the Universe' by John Charlot, 1983.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/world/black-hole-name-powehi-scli-intl/index.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2019/07/18/why-some-native-hawaiians-are-protesting-construction-of-the-thirty-meter-telescope/#49c657b7112a                                               

#25 'American Childhood/Silkie' was chosen for a buyer based on his educating children, and having ties to Madison, WI. where this was displayed in a competition. It was serendipitous that the colors in this quilt goes so well with the room.

49. A commission for the wall space above a bed.

48. 'Powehi' (hawaiian word which means: "embellished dark source of unending creation". Named after the first Black Hole first photographed this year, 2019. Two of the eight telescopes used to photograph the black hole are on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. 13.5 x 13.5 2019.4 Aloha print border, linen, synthetics, knits, Japanese brocade, Chinese silk. GIFTED to UU sangha (Mindful Reflection Community) for their meditation candle.

47. 'American Dream / American Nightmare (Wizard of OZ)'. 2019.3 @ 64" x 69" American cloths. 900.00

The dream of an immigrant can easily turn into a nightmare. Dorothy arrives in a strange new land full of hope and plans: it can turn ghastly wrong. Fierce eagles remind me of the not friendly flying monkeys on the Wizard of Oz. Foreboding black bunting surround all. One side is full of color, the other side is ghostly pale.

Turning woven "quilts"; like flipping Beatles 45's from side A to side B.

These 'A' sides, will be flipped to the 'B' sides for the last 5 days of 'It Takes a Village' at Oak Park Public Library. Saturday March 23, at 1:00.

'It Takes a Village' at the Oak Park Public Library opening and 5 pieces not previously shown.

side A

side B

side A

side B

side A

side B

side A

side B