Intention

"We are a nation of immigrants", seems to be the key statement for today, hearing the words across the board throughout mass media, blogs, and on to college kids sharing a keg beer at your local house party. Very true and relevant during these times of upheaval, bringing significant change, we are inclined to remind ourselves of our roots, where we are coming from, and how we began building our great nation, to which we owe people of many races, ethnicities, and cultures apart from our own. The question is, how will we change.

One thing to be sure of, the societal tree, plant, flower (almost typed Bush, not a positive metaphor for today), or what have you, cannot thrive or grow without its roots. The last thing we can do is look down upon or avoid dealing with immigration, we must evolve in our process of.

That brings me to my main intention for this event, as I mentioned in the initial post, to raise money for the family you see above, Tang, Nga, Huan, and Ngan, who have just immigrated to America after a ten year process from the village of Loc Khan, central Vietnam, and my parents, who have taken them under their wing, providing jobs, food, and their home, based on the Vietnamese principal of nghia, stated in Neil L. Jamieson's book Understanding Vietnam, "Nghia implies duty, justice, and obligation. It includes the willingness to do what one must do to fulfill one's social obligations, to repay on...".

Progression

At this point the progression of the show is going very well. I'm pleased to report that the editing and processing of the final images is nearing its final chapter. It began with 3000+ images (which I collected in Vietnam while traveling the country twice over, by land, starting in Ho Chi Minh City, the southern capital, and working our [group consisted of my two Uncles, Tang and Tong, cousins Sinh, Hang, and Que, my mom, and I] way to the northern capital of Hanoi and back down to Ho Chi Minh City, in one month's time [the country compares in size to California]), edited those down to approximately 1000 and processed each of those individually, all of which I have uploaded to my image library at 3rdBound. From there, I have selected the strongest 120 images and will decide which of those will be included in the final series of 18, which I will begin to sell in limited editions of 25 each, signed and numbered, come show-time.

Met with Tom Parsons yesterday concerning the t-shirt design for the show, he has done some great work for Bele Chere, Brew Grass Festival and the like for Asheville. He was definitely on the right track and I can hardly wait to see his final design.

You should start seeing posters up, postcards passed around, and listings in our local weeklies. Tickets, which include entry, Vietnamese cuisine, beer, sake, and an all-around cultural experience of Vietnam, are limited, I implore you to order them soon or go to Artemisia Gallery, BoBo Gallery, or Harvest Records to pick yours up today!

Introduction

At this point I can only imagine, and hope, that the first entry be the hardest to begin and easiest to finish. The only way to know is to jump in, typing away, as I have with my not-so-proper two-handed three or four finger style, predominately using the middle fingers and pointers, occasionally incorporating a pinky. So there you have it, a little bit about myself, now on to the show.

The actual planning of "Vietnam(more than war)" started September 1st, with over 3000 images to process and edit through, a calendar to be designed and produced, along with the prints, large and small, people to organize as far as t-shirts, food, & sponsors go, this website design, further marketing, and so on. So I set the date at November the 11th, giving 2 months from conception to production, which has been improvised every step of the way, yea, that should be enough time(with heaps of stress). Should have listened to Gabriel Shaffer, when I read that he spent a year on the execution of the "Shining Dunces", a multi-venue group show which he curated at LG. Lesson #1, plan, plan, plan, nail down decisions, see entire project through, then roll with the set plan and do not deviate from it. I'll try that next time, look forward to the comparison.

One thing that I've had going for me is that the idea had been brewing in my mind for a quite a while, picking up concepts to incorporate into the show along the way, having visited Vietnam the month of March, 2005. There I was opened to many experiences of sight, sound, and taste that still saturate my being to this day, which has become one of many motivations for putting this event on, to share these experiences with state-siders such as yourself. Others include: to promote travel to Vietnam (as the tourism industry is the vehicle to which the means of reconstruction rides), home of Confusion family values and other rich cultural delicacies, and to raise money for my Uncle Tang's family, comprised of two kids, Huan and Ngan, and his wife Nga, who just immigrated to America after a ten-year process and are now residing with my parents in Winston-Salem, NC. Part of proceeds will be sent to the Vietnam Relief Effort, a non-profit that helps impoverished areas and peoples of Vietnam.

Also, I see this as an optimistic piece for our times, with so many parallels being drawn between the Vietnam War (or the "American War", as the Vietnamese would have it) and our current situation in Iraq, I wish to give hope to a peaceful, independent Iraq, thirty years from now, rebuilding their country on their own, with culture and pride intact as Vietnam is doing now. But they are still far behind, a great imbalance exists in the quality of life in which they and I enjoy, yet, they are no different from me, we share the same blood, and generally, as the Dali Lama said in his Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, "No matter what part of the world we come from, we are all basically the same human beings. We all seek happiness and try to avoid suffering. We have basically the same human needs and concerns. All of us human beings want freedom and the right to determine our own destiny as individuals and as peoples. That is human nature." So as of recently I've found that I would like to dedicate the better part of my work in helping the course of bringing balance to the country of my ancestors and to my own, through events and projects such as this one...stay tuned.

p.s. - this initial entry was easier to begin, once I started typing and entered a stream of thought, than it was to finish, skeptical that I had not covered everything that I wanted to say and that I had communicated it clearly, which leads to a cliched Lesson #2, you never know until you try.