This spring, the Chinese Culture Center (CCC) of San Francisco continues its annual Xian Rui (‘fresh’ and ‘sharp’) exhibition series with Orange Peel, Harbor Seal, Hyperreal, the first solo exhibition in the Bay Area of the work of critically-acclaimed American artist Adrian Wong. The six new sculptural works, created specifically for the exhibition, excavate the similarities and parallels between the present architecture and design of San Francisco’s Chinatown and that of Hong Kong circa 1970.
Wong, also selected as one of 31 international artists to participate in the Asian Art Museum’s concurrent Phantoms of Asia contemporary art exhibition , relies heavily on a research-based method to explore the intricacies of his relationship to his environment — experientially, historically, culturally, and through the filter of fantastical or fictionalized narratives.
Wong made three separate trips to San Francisco in preparation for the exhibition at the CCC, spending countless hours wandering the streets of Chinatown. Based part time in Hong Kong, he was struck by the closely related, but distinct sense of nostalgia that asserts itself visually in both places.
While the Cultural Revolution raged in China in the 1960s and 1970s, British-ruled Hong Kong experienced a vibrant and often idiosyncratic commingling of western psychedelic and traditional Chinese design cultures. References to Taoist cosmology in decorative motifs and staid patterns were suddenly re-presented in colorful abstractions of their original ceremonial counterparts. This now iconic heyday of design, made mythic during the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema, was burned into the collective consciousness of not only the Chinese Diaspora but also of the world at large as representative of the “exotic East.”
Across Hong Kong, the products of this period became ubiquitous and remain distinctive to this day—though most have fallen into disrepair. Carrying the markers of decades of use, they nevertheless continue to catch the eye, making appearances in unexpected places: in alleyways, beneath layers of dust in Chinese medical dispensaries, well-worn countertops in local eateries, and in piles of detritus generated by the unending urban renewal projects initiated by the tourism board.
In San Francisco’s Chinatown, on the other hand, Wong found this aesthetic alive and well – a shiny and new version of elegance borrowed from another era. From the color palette of the mosaic tiled exteriors to the low-cost chandeliers, Chinatown looked to him like a living, but distorted simulacrum of Hong Kong in the 1970s – one that, according to him, “produced an analogous but fundamentally different kind of nostalgia for the period—sanitized, artificial, but still potent as if the simple act of simulation had become authentic despite its inaccuracies.”
2012年4月16日星期一
2011年5月29日星期日
Inside Tiny Schoolhouse, Everything Old Is New Again
Clothing-donation bins are often viewed as where wardrobes go to die.
Diane Formoso brings them back to life.
Inside a tiny, old schoolhouse, the Caring For Kids founder and her team of helpers sort endless piles of clothing to distribute to various organizations. Last year, they sent 785 heaping garbage bags to Caring For Kids' Ready to Learn Fair, gave another ton to the Springbrook Mobile Food Bank and made regular drop-offs to the Lakes FISH Food Bank.
In what should come as no surprise to anyone who has met Formoso, everything is methodically arranged in categories by size, gender and style.
And everything finds a home.
Men's dress clothing goes to the Phoenix Housing Network and women's, to Clover Park Technical College; costumes are sent to the Boys and Girls Club and baby clothes, to Alfretta House.
Then there are the clothing-bank orders that constantly pour in from counselors in the Clover Park School District. Formoso makes up bags with socks, underwear, clothing and shoes, and delivers them to the schools. She averages about 100 a month during the school year.
“We'll take anything,” said June Williams, who spends an estimated 12 hours a work at the clothing bank. “We have places for everything.”
Formoso nodded emphatically. “We can get rid of anything better than anyone.”
On this day, there was actually walking room in the old schoolhouse that once housed Custer Elementary – it sits on the edge of the school's property – but Formoso said that closer to the Ready to Learn Fair, which serves an estimated 2,600 children every August, the piles are “taller and wider than we are.”
Among the items being sorted were women's tops, men's pants and tiny baby clothes.
The latter is a favorite of Lois Hosking, Williams' mom, who often accompanies her to the clothing bank.
“I like to do these,” she said, holding up a blue onesie with white stars. “They're so cute.”
Not that she's picky, though.
“I just never stop,” she said. “I keep going.”
Such stamina is necessary for a never-ending project. There is always need – and there are always clothes.
Formoso regularly picks them up from a red collection bin shaped like a schoolhouse in the lobby of district headquarters, and she also raids schools' lost-and-found collections at the end of the year. They start picking them up on the last day of school, and some schools have more than 10 bags worth of unclaimed goods.
Amassing so many articles of clothing can make for some long days.
“We have decided that we hate clothes,” Formoso said with a laugh. “We love to give them out and we have to have them … but we hate them.”
Volunteers take clothes home to wash and then package them in white bags for the appropriate destination.
“It's a lot of laundry,” Williams said.
Some of that laundry ends up on the other side of the schoolhouse, in Formoso's meticulously arranged storage area for clothing-bank orders. There are hundreds of pairs of shoes that she buys by the carful from Payless Shoe Source, each labeled and bound together. Racks are stuffed with winter coats – one of the organization's biggest outreach efforts – and the shelves overflow with clothing in every size.
Even with such a large supply, Formoso rattles off a list of current needs: women's tops in size medium; girls' in sizes 6, 8 and 10; girls' shoes in sizes 12 and 13; toddler clothes in 18 and 24 months.
“To put these orders together, (the challenge) isn't getting them out, it's getting everything together,” she said.
Formoso admits that the best thing people can donate is money so she can purchase exactly what is needed at the time.
Besides, she said, “people will spend a lot on an item to donate, and for the amount they spend, I can get three.”
Even so, they won't turn anything away – within reason.
“There's a lot of garbage that kids would never wear in a million years,” Formoso said.
Anything stained or with huge holes – Hosking punctuated the guidelines with a dismayed look at a severely torn Hawaiian shirt – is not accepted. They do minimal mending, but volunteers will turn holey jeans into quilts to donate to Caring For Kids' annual dinner and auction.
And apparently, Formoso said, pointing at the ceiling, “We even take cobwebs in.”
The clothing bank's location is both a blessing and a curse to those that work there.
Prior to moving into the 1932 schoolhouse, the clothing bank was housed in the old Park Lodge Elementary, which was torn down in the mid 1990s.
Now, they operate out of a tiny building with a roof that leaked twice this winter – “and we had just cleaned the rug,” Williams said wryly – and boarded-up windows. About five years ago, a group of kids broke in and sprayed fire extinguishers everywhere. Fortunately, though, it was right after the Ready to Learn Fair, so there wasn't much there.
Since then, they have developed a strategy to keep kids from Custer and adjoining Hudtloff Middle School at bay.
“We tell the kids the place is haunted,” Williams said with a laugh. “And it works.”
Challenges aside, Formoso isn't complaining.
“The place is old and falling apart, but it's ours,” she said. “Everyone knows it's bad, but we manage – as long as we can do our work.”
Diane Formoso brings them back to life.
Inside a tiny, old schoolhouse, the Caring For Kids founder and her team of helpers sort endless piles of clothing to distribute to various organizations. Last year, they sent 785 heaping garbage bags to Caring For Kids' Ready to Learn Fair, gave another ton to the Springbrook Mobile Food Bank and made regular drop-offs to the Lakes FISH Food Bank.
In what should come as no surprise to anyone who has met Formoso, everything is methodically arranged in categories by size, gender and style.
And everything finds a home.
Men's dress clothing goes to the Phoenix Housing Network and women's, to Clover Park Technical College; costumes are sent to the Boys and Girls Club and baby clothes, to Alfretta House.
Then there are the clothing-bank orders that constantly pour in from counselors in the Clover Park School District. Formoso makes up bags with socks, underwear, clothing and shoes, and delivers them to the schools. She averages about 100 a month during the school year.
“We'll take anything,” said June Williams, who spends an estimated 12 hours a work at the clothing bank. “We have places for everything.”
Formoso nodded emphatically. “We can get rid of anything better than anyone.”
On this day, there was actually walking room in the old schoolhouse that once housed Custer Elementary – it sits on the edge of the school's property – but Formoso said that closer to the Ready to Learn Fair, which serves an estimated 2,600 children every August, the piles are “taller and wider than we are.”
Among the items being sorted were women's tops, men's pants and tiny baby clothes.
The latter is a favorite of Lois Hosking, Williams' mom, who often accompanies her to the clothing bank.
“I like to do these,” she said, holding up a blue onesie with white stars. “They're so cute.”
Not that she's picky, though.
“I just never stop,” she said. “I keep going.”
Such stamina is necessary for a never-ending project. There is always need – and there are always clothes.
Formoso regularly picks them up from a red collection bin shaped like a schoolhouse in the lobby of district headquarters, and she also raids schools' lost-and-found collections at the end of the year. They start picking them up on the last day of school, and some schools have more than 10 bags worth of unclaimed goods.
Amassing so many articles of clothing can make for some long days.
“We have decided that we hate clothes,” Formoso said with a laugh. “We love to give them out and we have to have them … but we hate them.”
Volunteers take clothes home to wash and then package them in white bags for the appropriate destination.
“It's a lot of laundry,” Williams said.
Some of that laundry ends up on the other side of the schoolhouse, in Formoso's meticulously arranged storage area for clothing-bank orders. There are hundreds of pairs of shoes that she buys by the carful from Payless Shoe Source, each labeled and bound together. Racks are stuffed with winter coats – one of the organization's biggest outreach efforts – and the shelves overflow with clothing in every size.
Even with such a large supply, Formoso rattles off a list of current needs: women's tops in size medium; girls' in sizes 6, 8 and 10; girls' shoes in sizes 12 and 13; toddler clothes in 18 and 24 months.
“To put these orders together, (the challenge) isn't getting them out, it's getting everything together,” she said.
Formoso admits that the best thing people can donate is money so she can purchase exactly what is needed at the time.
Besides, she said, “people will spend a lot on an item to donate, and for the amount they spend, I can get three.”
Even so, they won't turn anything away – within reason.
“There's a lot of garbage that kids would never wear in a million years,” Formoso said.
Anything stained or with huge holes – Hosking punctuated the guidelines with a dismayed look at a severely torn Hawaiian shirt – is not accepted. They do minimal mending, but volunteers will turn holey jeans into quilts to donate to Caring For Kids' annual dinner and auction.
And apparently, Formoso said, pointing at the ceiling, “We even take cobwebs in.”
The clothing bank's location is both a blessing and a curse to those that work there.
Prior to moving into the 1932 schoolhouse, the clothing bank was housed in the old Park Lodge Elementary, which was torn down in the mid 1990s.
Now, they operate out of a tiny building with a roof that leaked twice this winter – “and we had just cleaned the rug,” Williams said wryly – and boarded-up windows. About five years ago, a group of kids broke in and sprayed fire extinguishers everywhere. Fortunately, though, it was right after the Ready to Learn Fair, so there wasn't much there.
Since then, they have developed a strategy to keep kids from Custer and adjoining Hudtloff Middle School at bay.
“We tell the kids the place is haunted,” Williams said with a laugh. “And it works.”
Challenges aside, Formoso isn't complaining.
“The place is old and falling apart, but it's ours,” she said. “Everyone knows it's bad, but we manage – as long as we can do our work.”
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