In the midst of a civil war that would ravage her country, bring stinging defeat to the united states and forever change her young life, nga nguyen looked for beauty — and found it.
[Note: See Nga’s work at the Open Studio Show, an exhibition at her Weston studio, 2 Broad Street, November 30 through December 3, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a wine reception on November 30, 6-10 p.m.]
The place was Saigon, capital of what was then South Vietnam. By 1975 the war with Communist North Vietnam was all but over. The South, aided by American armed forces, had lost.
When Nga’s parents began wrapping up plans to leave their homeland, she was hardly oblivious to the fighting going on around her. She was able to retreat to the childlike world of imagination. The sight of an orchid in a neighbor’s window, the weathered face of street peddler, the swaying of reeds on a verdant pond were all the inspiration she needed to pick up a pencil and begin drawing.
The dream of becoming an artist had not yet formed in her mind. There wasn’t time for that. A new life in a new country was waiting.
“The end seemed to come very suddenly,” recalls Nga, whose home and studio are in Weston. “I remember climbing into a helicopter and sitting next to an American soldier. He was leaving, too. He had a gun, a big gun, and he looked … I don’t know how to describe it, stunned or maybe amazed is a better word, and then we flew off.”
She explains, “He was a GI aiming an M16 out of the military plane’s small window, ready to shoot in case the VC started to shoot down the plane.”
Nga hasn’t returned to Vietnam in thirty years. But the memories of her birthplace, along with the delicate sensibilities and styling of that Asian culture, are captured in her art, art that is as practical as it is beautiful.
Nga works in lacquer, sometimes called by its Japanese name urushi. A resinous material made from the sap of a deciduous tree (Rhus vericiflua) common to China, Korea and other East Asian countries, the lacquer forms a hard, clear veneer over her brightly colored paintings inspired by nature.
Her work often takes the form of folding screens that can be used as room dividers or hung as wall decorations. At her studio, Asia By Design, she also sells lacquer jewelry boxes, painted furniture and paintings.
Her technique is much the same as that which Asian artists have used for centuries to produce highly coveted lacquer pieces, the rarest of which have fetched upwards of $1 million at auction. Lacquer, Nga explains, is a difficult material to work with and an even more difficult one to harvest. The lacquer tree belongs to the same family of plants as poison sumac, poison ivy and poison oak. The slightest contact with the grayish-brown sap, refined lacquer, or even the fumes produced during the manufacturing process, can cause an extreme allergic reaction in some people.
“Some artists expose themselves to tiny amounts of lacquer over time, so their skin gets used to it and they don’t react,” says Nga. “I always wear gloves when I work.”
The lacquer is applied in three very thin coats over a several weeks; one coat has to dry completely before the next is applied. Lacquer that’s brushed on too thick will never fully cure. Cured lacquer is harmless to touch.
“When I first started I had to throw out some pieces because I had not perfected my technique,” Nga admits. “If the lacquer is too thick, it appears cloudy.”
There’s no mistaking the lustrous, mirror-like sheen of lacquer that has been correctly applied and allowed to cure at a strictly regulated temperature and humidity. Lacquered artworks are typically placed in a cabinet, also known as a “furo,” under relatively high humidity until fully cured.
Depending on the size of the work, several days or weeks must pass before the next layer is brushed on. Between applications, the surface is polished with fine abrasives, ensuring that each layer is uniformly smooth. “It’s a fairly labor-intensive process,” she explains. For Nga, it’s a labor of love, a way of remaining connected to her past and to a culture that might have otherwise been lost.
Nga’s father sold lacquer artwork at his small shop in Saigon, but she didn’t start working in the medium until years after she and her family immigrated to the United States. She was in high school when she exhibited and sold her first lacquered paintings. “I really wasn’t sure I was any good, but after people started showing an interest in my work,
I thought, I just might be able to be an artist someday,” she recalls.
While developing and honing her technique, Nga received a degree in interior design, training that she maintains has increased her sensitivity to her clients’ tastes. Today, she also works as a design consultant for Ethan Allen Furniture. “My pieces have to work with the entire room,” she says. “They can’t be overpowering. Everything has to flow together seamlessly.” To achieve that goal, Nga confers with her clients for an hour or more, talking about their choice in furniture, fabric and other design elements in the room where her work will be displayed.
While she continues to draw on traditional Asian themes for her inspiration, Nga has, in the last few years, been producing more abstract pieces, rather than the strictly realistic representations of plants, animals and people that dominated her earlier work. Eschewing the subdued palette of traditional Vietnamese lacquer, Nga favors vibrant splashes of color, often accentuating them with gold leaf. Delicate swirls of vivid red, gold and blue suggest a crashing wave, or perhaps the whispering wind; a smattering of yellow and gold rectangular forms against a greenish-black background evokes images of dappled sunlight peeking through tall grass.
Her work shows a respect for conventions of East Asian lacquer art, yet it resides most comfortably in that narrow place between the past and the future, sometimes represented by the ancient symbol of the Chinese Tao, two opposites swimming together in eternal harmony. “My work is about delicacy, balance,” says Nga. “I want it to be subtle, but powerful in its own way. Some people may see that as a paradox, but on a deeper level,
I think, that’s the way of the world.”