Luong Vu, Project 2: Wooden Box + Steel Box
Wooden Box:
Steel Box:
Luong Vu, Project 3: Part 3 + Part 4
Part 3: Choose a strategy
I want to create a human face’s sculpture with some hyperreal aesthetic features like the clay works of Johnson Tang.
Part 4: Sketches
Luong Vu, artsXpose #4
Title of Event: Annu Palakunnathu Matthew lecture for Bucknell’s 2022 Ekard Artist-in-Residence
Date & Time of Event: 5:30pm, April 5
Location of Event: HOLMES HALL 116 Hislop Family Auditorium
Type of event: Artist lecture
Art21 Contemporary Sculpture Assignment, Luong Vu
As I watched the interviews of different contemporary artists on Art21, I was inspired by Jes Fan’s idea of challenging the beauty standard through his sculpture work. His sculptures question the thin line between aesthetics and grotesque as he incorporates biological materials like piss and blood into his glass, silicon, and resin mixture. Through his work, he wants to challenge the common perception of beauty set for race and gender and how it is associated with suspension. I’m interested in how he uses science to create art, exploring different substances to construct his own idea of beauty. I also feel related to the idea of suppression and rebellion in his work and how he wants to address the unrealistic beauty standard.
I’m also drawn by Doreen Garner’s idea of sculpting traumatic experiences, which are mostly related to the body. She wants to demonstrate how the failure of one organ can cause the whole body to fall, as was her sister’s experience. I find her process of creating human organs and body parts from mold-making techniques and mixed media very interesting to learn from. Her works look so real and vivid that it helps to create a haunting impression of traumas. Through her work, she also wants to voice the race issue and use it as a way to address the brutal acts made against Black women.
Luong Vu, Project 3: Part 1 + 2
One concern that has always existed in my mind is the balance between art and science in life.
As I grow up in a typical Asian family, academic pursuit is a very important subject for family discussion. This kind of discussion never ends in peace though as the career path I map out does not live up to my family’s expectations. While my parents and my sister all excel at science subjects, I’m more interested in art, something considered an unrealistic academic and career goal, especially by many Asian parents. Even in the Vietnamese community at Bucknell, I am surrounded by STEM major students, which sometimes gives me peer pressure. However, that fact does not discourage me from pursuing my interest but rather evokes my curiosity about the differences in the perspectives of a STEM major and an art major. I believe that the subjects we are learning have a great impact on our personalities and how we see the world.
Still, I believe that both art and science are crucial for human creativity, and at a certain point, they intersect. A good balance of art and science is also an expression of a nuanced mind which can view the world in different layers and colors. This final project will be another reflection of my identity as I try to find the middle point between the two important aspects of my world.
10 tangible people/places/things: 1. My Vietnamese friends at Bucknell 2. My parents 3. Me 4. Science symbol 5. Paint 6. Butterfly 7. School 8. Mask 9. Eyes 10. Portrait
Art21 Contemporary Sculpture Assignment, Luong Vu
As I researched several contemporary artists and their interviews, I am particularly interested in the work and ideas of Do Ho Suh and Kiki Smith. For Do Ho Suh, I feel related to how he uses home and identity as the primary source of inspiration for his sculpture work. Viewers can acquire a better understanding of the Korean culture through some of his pieces like High School Uni-form (1997), in which he shows the Korean uniform style and the uniformity imposed on high school students in Seoul, or Some/One (2005), which is a reminiscence of his time serving in the military as an obligation for every Korean man. I’m also interested in how he incorporates both Western and Korean traditional architectural styles into his sculpture work to represent his migration to the US. That is an idea that I have always wanted to explore, and I think I can learn a lot from his methods of conveying cultures and identity. For Kiki Smith, I have gained a closer insight into her process of creating human figures and features. I’m interested in learning about her different techniques of casting human bodies, from making molds to carving out of wax. I think it will be a challenge to be able to recreate detailed, human-like features like her arts. These concepts and skills are all something that I want to explore and apply to my future works.
Luong Vu, Project 2: “Shrines”, Part 4: Sketches
Luong Vu, Project 2: “Shrines”, Part 1-3
Part 1: Choose, consider, and clarify your topic
For the second project, I plan to make a shrine that symbolizes Vietnamese culture. Since Vietnam is a country that is heavily influenced by Buddhism, temples and pagodas have become an important religious part of many Vietnamese lives. I remember going to these sacred places every Lunar New Year to wish for good luck and prosperity. Since shrines also represent a holy place for worship, it reminds me of my home and culture. As an international student living far away from home, I have realized the importance of maintaining my identity while adapting to a new culture. Therefore, I want to make a shrine of my Vietnamese culture to remind myself of where I come from and what defines my identity. It is not only to preserve my distinctive values but also to introduce them to friends of different cultures.
Concerning the visual aspects of the sculpture, I intend to incorporate some traditional patterns of Vietnamese architecture into the shrine’s design. I also want to depict my culture through folklore paintings on the shrine’s exterior. Other cultural aspects that I want to include inside my shrine are lotus – the national flower and rice – the main food source for every Vietnamese. I plan to carve lotus from wood and put it on top of the shrine to represent its elevated position in my heart. The rice will be placed inside the shrine as a symbol of inner strength that keeps human function.
Part 2: Visual research
Part 3: Borrow a strategy
As One Pillar Pagoda is one of the most famous pagodas in Vietnam for its unique composition and its ancient architecture in the middle of the modern city of Hanoi, I want my shrine to stand on one pillar as inspired by this work.
Luong Vu, artsXpose #3
Title of Event: Shark Tank by Natalie Ring
Date & Time of Event: Thursday, February 10th, 5pm
Location of Event: Holmes Hall
Type of event: Senior Exhibition/ Art Show