Embraced

Polished granite sculpture

My childhood experience in the Vietnam War has, paradoxically, become a driving force in my artistic creations. Escaping from the war-ravaged small village in Vietnam at age twelve, my consequent voyage with other “boat people” started my life journey for love in a more humane world.

I am impassioned with biomorphic abstract forms. As an artist, ?I am aware of and respect the (art) movements of my time, but to create I remove myself from the influences of the time and retreat into a private space where I can experiment and explore possibilities of each phase of my inner life.

I continue to search for an organic fusion between my creative ideas and the abstract form. If such a fusion exists, or a moment of visualizing such fusion is possible, I know it only exists in the long journey ahead.

When sculpting, I employ abstract sculpture language to explore human relationships, which to me, are the origin of life. Lines, especially curved lines, fascinate me; they seem to have the capacity for embracing all other lines; forming various shapes. Curved lines are also metaphors, they represent the feminine power in the universe, the nourishing and generating force of all lives. Joining curved lines with other lines, I have created the sacred bond between Mother and her children, compassionate love among human beings, intensive love between lovers, cyclical movements in nature.

Many of my sculptures express the self-contained cosmos in its cycle of exhaustion and regeneration. In other pieces, I have combined forms in a way that is expressive of relationships between living beings. It is not enough for me that a work of art be beautiful or express emotion: I want my pieces to carry each viewer beyond sensation, into realms of contemplation.