floweb

As an African American, I want to call artist Flo Oy Wong, who is Chinese American, a griot. She uses art to tell stories, so, like a West African griot, who retells over and over the history and traditions of a family or a village, Flo keeps the stories of both her family and others alive through her art. She makes sure that you know the story – whether it is of her family, or of her husband’s family, or someone else’s family. We should all be so committed to remembering. We all know that we are connected to a long line of people who have displayed greatness and experienced tragedy. Many of us are disconnected from that history, perhaps glimpsing only bits and pieces of those who shaped us as individuals. Flo’s gift is in giving clarity to those stories by raising the voices of the ancestors so that they are not forgotten.

The 40 Acres Art Gallery resides in the midst of Oak Park’s ethnically diverse community of 28,000 residents, including an Asian population of over 5,600. 40 Acres seeks to showcase art that is representative of Oak Park, so telling the story of the Chinese is an absolutely appropriate and exciting means to broadening the gallery’s appeal as a place to showcase art that is a representation of diverse voices.

When the Sacramento Philharmonic’s director Jane Hill suggested working collaboratively on the Gold Mountain project, I was more than willing. In addition to the Philharmonic’s debut of several original compositions by musicians Jon Jang and Gang Situ, Jane felt an important component to the project would be also to showcase the work of a great visual artist and a personal friend, Flo Oy Wong. Flo is well known nationally for her multi-media installations that beautifully capture the essence of shared stories that convey the journey many Chinese have experienced in America. Without hesitation we agreed to exhibit Flo’s work.

Flo’s energy is infectious and untiring. Despite being a grandmother, Flo has more gusto than most thirty year-olds. Her passion and commitment to details is clearly evident. Beading and embroidery, coupled with the use of rice and rice sacks, are distinctly her style. They evoke domesticity and female work in general, as well as the beaded tapestries of Caribbean folk art. The incorporation of rice as a sculptural element directly refers to Chinese customs, its use in Chinese cuisine and specifically a personal tragedy in Flo’s childhood.

The exhibit, Whispers of the Past, creatively and artistically conveys the stories not only of Flo’s family, but those of key Sacramento and Delta region families. Whispers of the Past has become not only a retrospective exhibit of her work, but also features new stories, particularly the journeys of the families of Frank Fat, Edna Mae Fong, Bill King and Ming Nee Mah. Flo spent months with members of the four families, taking down their stories, viewing their photographs and integrating the two into works of art that would capture the essence of their narratives. Critical to the successful completion of each work of art was that Flo was not capturing a linear history, but instead the family’s historical essence. Months of research were crystallized into key elements that, in Flo’s imitable style, celebrate the lives of individuals who made contributions to Sacramento region’s history.

In Sacramento, through the words of his son, Jerry, Frank Fat’s business had humble beginnings down the street from the State Capital, where Frank Fat’s quiet countenance, the game of mah jong at the Fat home, and the smell of shrimp dumplings and salty fermented black beans augured a restaurant empire that now comprises twelve restaurants. For Rebecca Strickland, her mother Edna Mae Fong’s inspiring story as Sacramento’s first Chinese American female physician, began in China and was sustained through her attendance at Oak Park’s own Sacramento High School. Rebecca describes the difficulty her mother experienced trying to establish a practice within what was at that time a predominately white male occupation.

From Sacramento’s Delta region, two other voices reach us. Gene Chan remembers the vivid the stories of his uncle, Bill King, whose exploits as a pilot with the U.S.A.F.’s Flyer Tigers during World War II made him a hero to his family and the Chinese community living in Locke, California. In Walnut Grove, Ming Nee Mah’s barbershop, as told by his son Lim Mar, was a place of community for whites and Chinese alike.

Flo captured each of the richly detailed narratives through collage and found objects. Fabric scrims are made for each story and incorporate hundreds of photographs, repeated, collaged together and silk-screened to the fabric. Suspended from bamboo poles like Chinese manuscripts, the scrims are then embellished with detailed beading for emphasis, with accents of small plastic bags of rice sewn in. The collage scrims serve as installation titles. The installations incorporate found objects and memorabilia borrowed from the families to convey each story. A table of rice, a barber chair with shaved hair, a pilot’s bomber jacket, and a dresser filled with physician’s instruments, all artistically rendered. Each work of art shares allows us to appreciate someone else’s story, and contrast it with our own lives.

Several installations also feature distinctly African American elements. Given Flo’s strong and obvious connection to Chinese experiences, it is a pleasant surprise to see included in her oeuvre several pieces that include Kente cloth, black and white photographs of African Americans, and black-eyed peas. Upon closer inspection, you realize that doesn’t tell exclusively Chinese stories, but American stories. Flo’s focus may at first appear to be stories that are most familiar to her, but the larger vision is a very old story of how people, regardless of and perhaps in spite of their cultural and ethnic differences, are collectively brought together as Americans.

One installation in particular, Baby Jack Rice Story, tells the story of her husband, Edward Wong, and his childhood experiences being raised within a strongly African American community in 1940’s August, Georgia. The installation conveys a rarely heard story: two communities of blacks and Chinese in the United States came together in order to help each other in times of difficulty. In an imperfect world where communities preferred to stick to their own, several young boys broke ranks and forged a friendship that defied what was expected of them. I felt this story, should be heard in Sacramento, and particularly within Oak Park.

As in many other growing cities, Augusta Georgia’s dependence on labor to build canals and railroads in support of the newly-constructed factories during the late nineteenth-century was fueled by the hiring of cheap labor, both black and Chinese. Ed’s father, Yet Choy Wong, like others from his village, emigrated from China to Augusta in 1919. He saved up enough money to open a grocery store a year later in the poor black and segregated community now known as the Bethlehem Historic District.(1) Ed’s mother and brother, Ted, joined Ed’s father in Augusta in 1930; Ed was born in 1934. Called Be Be Jai, colloquial Chinese for baby boy, Ed soon affectionately became known as Baby Jack in the neighborhood.

Until 1949, when the family eventually relocated to Oakland, California, the grocery store, known as “The Corner,” provided a place of community for the blacks living in the Wrightsboro Road area of Augusta. Ed’s family’s geographical isolation from other Chinese families encouraged Ed to become friends with blacks in the neighborhood. Horace G. Dawson, Jr.(2) became a family friend, and tutored Ted in English. Ed and Larry met and played with Boykin and Cush Cade, even though they attended separate and segregated schools. Their enduring friendship, exposed them to unforgettable experiences they would not have otherwise had, including black women washing clothes under the shade of Chinaberry trees, black men gathering to play checkers and shoot dice, and watching minor league baseball games from the segregated bleachers.

Returning to Augusta in 1993 with his wife, Flo, Ed relived his experiences so that Flo could capture the memories and transform them into a work of art. The result, Baby Jack Rice Story, shows how the simplest of deeds and events – helping someone to learn English, as an example - can become powerful connectors to bridging the gap between ethnic and cultural differences. Baby Jack Rice Story is nearly fifty feet in length and consists of multiple rice sack cloth panels rich with hand-sewn repetitive text, beading and sepia-toned and black and white imagery that depict Wong family members, the Cade family, and the family grocery store. Key images and words, when coupled together, evoke memories that allow the viewer to tap into their own experiences.

There is a message: history can be repeated, people can still choose to defy the odds and learn more about that which may be unfamiliar, because in the end we’ll benefit from understanding and perhaps come closer together as a people. The message may seem lofty, but the reality is clear. It is the only way we will get past the separateness and division that is the hallmark of isolation and segregation. Learning more about your neighbors, whose skin color may be different from your own, may be the start of bringing us closer together.

(1) Interview questions for Ed Wong about the Chinese Community in Augusta, Georgia, 22 April 2006.

(2) Horace G. Dawson, Jr is now director of the Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center at Howard University