Whether she's carving intricate human forms into candy-colored crayons or painting illustrations of people on ceramic plates, Vietnam-born artist Diem Chau's beautiful creations spark the imagination and inspire the kind of tactile desire you felt as a kid in the toy store. Pretty ironic stuff when you consider the fact that Chau didn't have a very typical childhood.

"I was very quiet and stayed to myself," she told me. "I grew up around adults more than children and I didn't have a lot of friends. It all sounds so horrid, but I had a blast. I had the jungle! I would sum up my childhood experience as a year's residency in the Philippines Refugee Processing Center (PRPC) where my family stayed before arriving in America. The PRPC was a place to acclimatize refugee to Western procedures and taught us a bit of English. They also screened us for contagious diseases and to see if we were commie spies (or so I've been told). We lived in communal housing, were given weekly food rations and both my parents did odd jobs during the day for extra money.

"Some days I would have school, but most days I wandered the jungles in Bataan...barefoot! Thinking back I was not a very wise child. I was fearless and stupid. From about 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. no one knew where I was and I didn't see anyone on my walks. Just me and the landscape. I remember doodling where ever I went. Paper and pencil, the cheapest and most portable toys a kid can have. I walked barefoot because my shoes kept falling apart; they were those cheap jelly shoes. Those were different times. I would never recommend any child do what I did."

You can see the fruits of her upbringing in Chau's most recent mixed media pieces, many which are available on her Web site. "I love working with common objects because it's a familiar platform," she explains. "As a society we communicate through a common language. Words are symbols with mutually agreed upon meanings and through language we're able to find connections, learn, grow and evolve together. I see my medium (cups, bowls, thread, crayons, toothpicks) as symbols for that common language. They are familiar objects that carry a meaning and history to every person. These are things in every household, all classes and cultures. I try to use these objects as words to build a story."

Stay tuned for the next installment of her tale when she shows Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art in November!

- Caroline Stanley

Similar Topics:art, emerging artists, galleries

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