TYRUS WONG: BRUSHSTROKES IN HOLLYWOOD

Good things happening for my friend, Tyrus Wong, a national treasure as an artist, animator and now at 102, the subject of a documentary by filmmaker, Pamela Tom, that is nearing completion.

TYRUS WONG: BRUSHSTROKES IN HOLLYWOOD follows Tyrus from his journey to the United States at age 7 with his father, through his young teen years as a scholarship student - they never knew how young he was! - at Otis Art Institute, through his both commercial and fine art career as an artist - the man responsible for the look of Disney's classic Bambi!  Today he is the oldest living graduate of Otis.

I have been photographing Tyrus for several years now when he, in his fourth decade of retirement, brings his handmade kites to Santa Monica beach as a gift to us all.

Pamela has turned to Kickstarter to help fund the completion of BRUSHSTROKES IN HOLLYWOOD and I hope all of you will join in the campaign, TYRUS WONG: BRUSHSTROKES IN HOLLYWOOD at Kickstarter.     Please support this documentary, aimed for completion by this coming summer.  Kickstarter today just chose it as one of their own picks!!!!   There are also some fun rewards for helping fund it, the funding increments in units of 8, a Chinese lucky number.

Recently I was privileged to be able to visit Tyrus' home/studio and here is a quick pic, along with one of my portraits of Tyrus and his kites, the portrait which I have happily contributed to the PR efforts for this film funding project.

 

Quiet for a while but updating again!

It was such a busy, terrific year that so much has happened but no time to update!

Five exhibitions from January until into the summer, some of it concerning the FINDING CHINATOWN project and others involved with my overall portfolio work.  See my May post on my other blog, SARA JANE BOYERS ALOUD

Of course, the most wonderful was to have my images of the centarian artist (now 102) Tyrus Wong, and his kites - one framed composition and a flip-book - included in Sonia Mak's terrific Getty Pacific Standard Time (PST) exhibition and accompanying catalogue:  'ROUND THE CLOCK: CHINESE AMERICAN ARTISTS WORKING IN LA at the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles City College   http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2012/03/pacific-standard-time-vincent-price-art-museum.html

The show was simply terrific and Tyrus' work - both his "commercial" animation and film design and his distinctive paintings - simply shone.

 

And now, even better news for Tyrus.  To come in following post!

In Spring, again the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs again requested and published several of my photographs of Los Angeles' downtown Chinatown in the Asian and Pacific Islander American Hertage Month Calendar & Cultural Guide.

 

All the while, new themes from this extensive body of work - now over 12 years - present themselves to me and I look again at the project.  Here: a light, no pun intended, but intriguing one: the color of the Chinatowns brought about so often by the choice of the lights for illumination used, in this case, fluorescence and the often naked blub:

The Year of the Water Dragon 2012

My Lunar New Year Greeting is online at http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=013a28d9f024038bd399086bb&id=2e7d2cfa8f&e=9151fee9c4

With best wishes for a properous year.

Acquired by LACMA!

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has just accepted Ming's Cafe (above), a print from FINDING CHINATOWN, into its collection. I am very honored.

Ming's Cafe, was taken from my trip through California's Central Valley in the inland city of Bakersfield.

I loved the trip for it crossed history and explained a lot about the migration of not only Asian (primarily Chinese and Japanese) immigrants to the United States in the late 1800s/early 1900s but also a terrific examplar of how American absorbs immigrants. I have posted previously about this in my post on Fresno.

In Bakersfield, a city where Chinese immigrants first came for agriculture, a large freeway exit points to Ming's Boulevard, one very prominent family. The early Chinatown was large. Today, with the generations of early Cantonese families gone and, in an area subject to earthquakes, one of which decimated the city and the Chinatown with it, there are remnants but also a burgeoning new "Chinatown," not centered as before but replete with newer immigrants from the Mainland and Taiwan.

So it was, in driving around Bakersfield's older center, that I saw construction close to this
"old-school" Chinese restaurant, Ming's Cafe. Plans are expansion and modernization however the interiors now, red "leather" booths and traditional ornament remind me of the Chinese restaurants of my youth.

I ventured in, way before the lunch hour, where I met Wendy and her husband, recent immigrants from Hong Kong who had purchased the restaurant and were in the midst of renovation. Still open for business with older patrons in for their morning cup of coffee or tea, they were also preparing for their son's applications for law school.





Change continues in the Americas as each new person who arrives settles into our routines, not forgetting the old but adapting, joining and contributing their history and culture, their entrepreneurship, their expertise and best of all their intelligence and work ethics to our continual melting pot.

UPDATE

Sadly change does affect some of our historic places, as evidenced by another Chinatown I photographed on this same trip: that of the community of Hanford, further up. There a small group of preservationists are working hard to save the historic buildings and small museum. It is authentic, accurate and so worth saving. http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/wireStory?id=13867051#.TxnjTCMih1w

La Lettre de la Photographie

Because it is the holidays, La Lettre de la Photographie, a terrific online daily newsletter read by the international photographic community, asked for holiday/celebration image contributions, not necessarily just of Christmas and the New Years. Thinking over the many ways of celebration, I realized that something from the Lunar New Year, as it is celebrated in the Chinatowns of the United States and specifically, my hometown of Los Angeles with its historic and its modern always changing population of Chinese residents and immigrants, would be perfect.

I always love a competition for it forces me to review what it is I have done and perhaps, especially in a long-term project such as FINDING CHINATOWN, discover something that I captured but overlooked until now. So it is with the photograph La Lettre published in their "magazine" today: After Midnight at the Thien Hau Temple on Yale Street, 2006.
The Temple is where I always return during the Lunar New Year, arriving along with many families often around 10 pm on the New Year's Eve and awaiting the new year. When the clock changes, right after midnight, the firecrackers roar and glisten and crackle; the lion dancers' drums start up and, as they enter the temple, followers reach out to touch them, lucky talismans for renewal and new hopes.

Christmas in Chinatown, Los Angeles

For the second year, a christmas tree is up in Los Angeles' Downtown Chinatown Plaza. The tree is stunning, filled with lanterns and lights and the lighting ceremony gathered a remarkably diverse collection of elders, tourists, residents and visitors to this historic Central Plaza of the "New" Chinatown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown,_Los_Angeles

We started the evening with dinner at one of the landmarks there, Hop Liu, a restaurant whose building has been featured in many films and where you step back into another time.

image adapted from the ChinatownVisitor Map

Then off to the Central Plaza where members of the Chinatown Business Improvement District, organizers of the event and creators of a terrific website, ChinatownLA.com, were gathering along with school children from the neighborhood (Castelar Elementary School and Solano Elementary schools).
It was a truly festive evening, a terrific start to the holidays and a perfect reminder of what it means to be in America, this amazing mix of cultures.

Tyrus at 101

It was last month that Tyrus Wong, centenarian animator, artist and kite man, turned 101. Yesterday, 26 November he was out again at the beach, flying his kites with a large attendance of family, friends and the usual amazed passersby.





In addition, two Disney photographers preparing for a significant article for the Disney magazine, DISNEY twenty-three, the quarterly publication of D23, the Disney fan club. Their February issue will feature Tyrus, one of their most fabled animators (Bambi) but concentrating this time on his kites.

A glorious day with little wind unfortunately but with clear skies and two new little kites I had never seen: a teeny insect made of tissue paper that in scale in the sky looks immense and a solitary panda, also small and light, both flown in the vain hope for some movement in the sky that would sustain them. Not much but for a moment, another delightful experience.


Notwithstanding, there was hope for at the beginning of the day, the beautiful butterfly kites flew along with a string of standard made kites that Tyrus long ago strung together.
At the end of the day, the sunset reflected off the compressed butterflies, awaiting their repackaging in the unique boxes Tyrus has adapted for kite storage, everything as always with a small personal drawing or decoration by him.