The Laundry Maze is up!

The Laundry Maze

The Portland Building Lobby
1120 SW 5th Avenue
Portland, Oregon

7am to 6pm, Monday through Friday
February 13 - March 16, 2012

Join me and walk through The Laundry Maze on these days

February 16, Thursday, 11am to 1pm
February 23, Thursday, 1pm to 3pm
March 2, Friday, 10am to noon
March 7, 11am to 1pm
March 13, Tuesday, 11am-1pm

I will be adding new material to the maze each week.

What is The Laundry Maze?

The Chinese laundry is an iconic thread of early China-to-US immigration story, and The Laundry Maze references this history to start a conversation about one aspect of immigration — that of the immigrants' changing professional identities.

Over the past few months, I reached out to immigrant communities through personal contacts, ESL classes, and adult literacy programs in Portland and also in other parts of the US. From each participant, I asked for brief descriptions/titles of their professions and jobs before and after they immigrated. Each pair of responses are then sewn on a shirt. Sketches of natural national boundaries — mountains, rivers, and oceans — are painted on the back of each shirt.

At the time of the exhibition's opening date on Feb 13, I have received about 70 pairs of job titles or descriptions. More data continue to arrive, and I will add these to the installation as they come in.

I started this project with a preconception — that most immigrants' after professions tend to be lower in prestige or social status when compared to their before positions. While this is true in some cases, I also find that many people are able to make lateral transitions, sometimes after a few years of additional schooling. Many participants are in this process now — either working or unemployed, but going to school.

As you walk through the maze, you can read and share the immigrants' experiences of changing professions. On another level, the format of the maze creates a sense of mystery and disorientation, sensations familiar to people finding their way in a new country.

At this point, I would also like to share a personal story. My grandfather immigrated from mainland China to Taiwan in the 1930s. After he married my grandmother, they tried several businesses before they found success with a dry cleaning/laundry business. By the time I came along, it was thriving. There was a room where all the cleaned suits, shirts, pants hung tightly on racks, waiting to be picked up. As children, my sister and I played hide and seek among the racks. Thus the seed for The Laundry Maze was planted.

The Laundry Maze gets physical

The Laundry Maze is the installation I'm doing at the Portland Building Feb 13 - March 16, 2012. There's been a lot of planning (a web survey, distributing postcard/flyer with self-stamped envelopes, connecting with ESL departments and adult literacy programs throughout the Portland area, asking friends who are immigrants, collecting shirts from friends...).

And now, things are getting physical...the first shirt has rolled off the production line!

I have gesso'ed 48 shirts (although I'm pretty sure I won't need anywhere that many; I'll probably need about 35 or so). So far, I have collected enough data pairs to sew around 2 sets of tags on each shirt. I'm also still setting up appts with ESL & literacy programs for the next few weeks. I will continue to add the tags while the installation is up. Hopefully, by the end of the installation period, I'll have 3-4 tags per shirt.

The back of each shirt will be a landscape sketch that I hope people can interpret in various ways. Each will be a sketch of mountains, rivers, and/or oceans, all natural national boundaries. But landscapes can mean so much in terms of what a 'home' is.



The front of the shirt will have tags of people's professions before and after immigration. Each pair will be stacked on top of each other; the "after" tag can only be read when you lift up the "before" tag.



The serger has been a great investment. It's handy in finishing the tags so that they won't fray as people lift up the before tags to read the after tags.

I have bought the dowels that will serve as the laundry lines, and the clothespins. I just need to finish sketching the remaining shirts, sewing/writing the remaining tags, then it's install, and the show opens!

2011 ornament

Back in the late 70s, we used to make Christmas ornaments as a girl scouts fundraiser. They were made from old Christmas cards, cut into circles which were then folded into triangles. The triangles were stapled together along the 3 edges, and 25 of these made a ball ornament. The bigger the original circle cutouts, the bigger the resulting ball. And of course there would be glitter on all the edges (to conceal the staples). We made huge ones and also little ones.

I hadn't made those in a long time, but decided to make another style of ornament from the 2011 cards. We don't get so many cards any more (since we don't send any...ahem). But there were enough cards with the right size images to make this. I used 4 cottage cheese container lids as the substrates, gel medium as the glue to cover the lids with scraps of decorative paper. With the plastic lids, I didn't need to worry about grain and I could use any little bit of paper scrap I had! Yippee! Wrapped gold ribbon around each of the segments and put one coat of GAC 500 over the decorative paper. The card cutouts were then collaged on after that. This is followed by gold paint along the edges...but of course!

The top shot is a star, from the Scarlet Star Studios.

Here are shots of a few of the segments. This is a snowflake from my mom.



Some Christmas stockings from a friend's mom.



From the famous Michael5000. Although I must say that, since he only spent 3.5 cents on this card, the paper is rather thin and weak, and it's not keeping the 2 halves open very well, against the push of the neighboring cards, which are clearly made of more stout stock. (OK, he might've said that he spent 35 cents on the card, but of course, I can no longer tell because the card is now cut up and glued to the ornament.) I even had to give it a little help by attaching another small piece of paper; but alas, it didn't help much.



And from a college friend and his wife.

Red Bean Paste and Apple Pie

Hey, I got my 2012 RACC Project Grant for Red Bean Paste and Apple Pie! Here's the intent for this project proposal:

"I will create a series of paintings using food as a metaphor to explore my transformation as a first-generation American. Nothing is more personal than each mouthful we put into our bodies, but what we eat and how we eat it are both seen as cultural and political indicators. I will use this duality to explore what it means to be an immigrant American by examining the changes to my diet and eating habits since immigrating to the United States. The paintings will be small format diptychs in gouache and acrylic on paper mounted on panels. This is the second of a multi-part series on immigration and migration."

I'll be starting to work on these paintings pretty much immediately. I've promised a lot of paintings, and at the speed I paint, it's gonna be a full time gig.

The first part of this multi-part series on immigration and migration is, of course, The Laundry Maze. Here's the proposal for The Laundry Maze , and here's the webpage set up for doing the survey.

You should, of course, help spread the word!

The third part is a book. It will be one-of-a-kind, and pretty big. At least as I see it in my head right now.

Two hummingbirds

Hummingbird of the Day, gouache & acrylic, 12"x12", 2011



Hummingbird of the Night, gouache & acrylic, 12"x12", 2011

Doing a commission is a lot different than doing something without a final client in mind, especially in this case where stories were provided, although I was able to add my own little twists to the basic premise. Definitely not the usual mode of operation around these parts where I'm making up the story as I go, and changing the rules as I go. The final images are above, here are some process photos:







Initially, I wanted the two pieces to be bolted together and so the rocks continue from the right into the left piece. But after I completed them both, I decided they were better on their own.

Two years and nine months later...

We have a book!

This was the book I started with an elderly WWII vet back at the start of 2009. His wife heard about the project I did at Rose Schnitzer Manor and thought I might be interested in working with him. And now two years and nine months later, I have completed the project!

The book is an edition of 26, Gocco printed on Nepal Heavyweight, a handmade paper from Nepal; each also has 5 etchings on cotton paper handmade by Helen Hiebert.

Here's a stack of a few books. The cover paper is handmade mulberry paper from Taiwan. The image is Gocco printed and then brushed with a foam brush.



The front & back covers, and the back of the accordion. The back cover is created using the same method as the front cover.



Detail on the back of the accordion. It's the melody from San Antonio Rose. If you know the song, you can follow along. Otherwise, it might just look like a landscape or the water.



The opening pages.



The first trifold. The brown paper with the etching is made by Helen and contains soil from the South Dakota farm that he was born and raised in.



The trifold opened up.



The second trifold. The blue paper with the etching contains water from the Pacific Ocean.



The trifold opened up.



The third trifold. The green-blue paper with the etching contains water from the Columbia River.



Opened.



The fourth trifold. The gray-blue paper with the etching contains water from the Willamette River.



Opened.



The last trifold. The brown paper with the etching contains soil from his Oregon farm.



Opened.



The closing pages.

Good news on the "pillow books"

Yippee! The University of Washington Special Collections just purchased all four of the "pillow books"! These were made at the beginning of my interest and work on progressive memory loss, and right before I started working with the elderly who are at various stages of dementia. I'm thrilled that they're going together to this wonderful collection. The UW collection also has a copy of all the books I created with the elderly.

So here are some images of the four "pillow books". There are more images and write-ups on all four books (and more) here.

Below, Random Cruelty



Tenuous Connections



A Dog's Tale



Cradles for Our Memories

More Relay Replay progress report

Definitely in book mode now. I actually finished all the etchings for this book back in March, and then didn't make much progress other than trimming papers. But I've been working on it in earnest now for the last couple of weeks and here are some process photos. There are 5 etchings all together (solarplate etchings) on each of the 5 sets of handmade paper made with soils and waters collected from various places (see this link for more on the papers and also some mockup pictures).

The main text block will be Nepal Heavyweight (handmade in Nepal), and the papers made by Helen Hiebert will be laminated to that. Each page is a trifold. On this photo you can see one etching (brown paper in the back) is already laminated to its trifold (already partially folded), and in the front a 2nd etching that I'm in the process of attaching to the Nepal Heavyweight.



This photo shows another etching with a topographical map gocco printed on one of the sections.



On the drying rack --



A peek into the trifold. Different images/text will be gocco printed on each of the sections.



Another page with 1 section printed.

In and Out of the Box

Woohoo, I got into In and Out of the Box exhibit with The Medium is the Baggage! You can see some process photos here. The acceptance letter started with (paraphrase) "there were so many qualified applicants and unfortunately...", so I figured I didn't get in, but then it said "I am pleased to let you know that the juror selected your work to be included..."! So woohoo!

Here's a shot right before I packed it all up:



This was the statement I sent with the piece:

The Medium is the Baggage examines the reality of product vs. the medium it is packed in by inverting the relationship between the two entities.

Practical or aspirational, the products we purchase often have limited live spans – they break down, wear out or we simply move on to the next new thing; they are, in effect, disposable. In mail-ordering, we have found something that will last generations. With the exception of biodegradable starch foam & paper packing, most packing materials are various forms of plastic that do not biodegrade and recycling is limited. When recycling is available, the materials are recycled into other forms of plastic.

In short, these packing materials are the heirlooms that we leave for future generations. By presenting 20 packing materials in a clamshell box packed in shredded mail-order catalogues, The Medium is the Baggage puts product and packing in their rightful places within the historical context.

Made mostly from repurposed materials that had previously arrived by mail - one Amazon shipping carton, various packing materials and mail-order catalogs. Other materials include recycled paper, repurposed mylar and packing tape.

Now lets work on books for a bit

After finishing the last of those 7"x7" panels, I'm returning to books for a while.

Here's one that I thought would be a fun, quick project, but I sunk 40+ hours into it, most of that time was spent on researching the various packing materials that are commonly found in mail ordered products. I tried contacting materials scientists, I looked on the web, and I called a foam/plastic manufacturer.

Now I know the difference between polyurethane, polyethylene, polystyrene, expanded polyethylene and expanded polystyrene. Phew! I wonder how long that information will keep in my head...as opposed to how long the actual materials will keep, which is basically forever.

The book is made from mostly repurposed materials that had previously arrived to me via mail — an amazon box, various packing materials, mail-order catalogs (indirectly through a neighbor); and then there's also recycled printer paper, mylar rescued from the JWSC trash bin and packing tape.

I wanted to make a sampler box of packing materials. So here I'm putting together the tray.



Here's the completed clamshell box made from the amazon shipping carton. On the left is the index to the samples, and the samples in their little cubbyholes on the right.



The clamshell box will be shipped, packed in shredded mail-order catalogs.