Welcome to our debut episode of Art is Awesome! As host Emily Wilson spends time with Richmond ceramic artist Cathy Lu.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Today, Emily chats with Richmond ceramics artist, Cathy Lu. Cathy is one of the winners of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s prestigious SECA award and her work is on display on the second floor of the museum for free through the end of May.
About Artist Cathy Lu:
Cathy grew up in Miami, in a family of immigrants from Taiwan and China. Her work manipulates traditional Chinese art objects and symbols as a way to deconstruct the assumptions we have about Asian American identity and cultural authenticity. By creating ceramic based sculptures and large scale installations, she explores what it means to be both Asian and American, while not being entirely accepted as either. Unpacking how experiences of immigration, cultural hybridity, and cultural assimilation become part of the larger American identity is central to her work.
Visit Cathy's Website: www.CathyCLu.com
Follow Cathy on Instagram: @_cathyclu_
--
About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
--
CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
2023-05-23 - Art Is Awesome Podcast - EP1 - Cathy Lu
[00:00:00] Artist Cathy Lu: [00:00:00] I just remember it burned in my mind. I was just, what is happening? What's going on? And like, this is so weird. And I don't know. That's just what I love about art. I think that's such a beautiful part of art is just sort of like, it changes how you perceive things, allows you to channel different experiences.
Host Emily Wilson: [00:00:19] That was ceramicist Cathy Lu talking about what art gives you on this week's episode of Art is Awesome.
Welcome to Art is Awesome. The show where we talk with an artist, or art worker, with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm your host, Emily Wilson. As a writer in San Francisco covering the arts, I see so many hardworking artists doing interesting work here in the Bay Area. And I wanted people to know about them.
So I came up with Art is Awesome.
[00:01:00] So today we're talking with Richmond ceramics artist Cathy Lu. Lu is one of the winners of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts prestigious SECA award. And her work is on display on the second floor of the museum for free through May 29th. This conversation was from a visit to her show, Interior Garden at the Chinese Cultural Center.
The center is on the third floor of the Hilton Hotel across from Portsmouth Square. Lu grew up in Miami. In a family of immigrants from Taiwan and China. Interior Garden came out of her reflecting on how immigrants are seen and not seen. Oh, and that sound you hear is from a water feature in Cathy's exhibition, you'll find out more about that.
Artist Cathy Lu: [00:01:59] I've been thinking [00:02:00] so much about this idea of racialized bodies and how so much of that is a focus, what you look like externally, and then also just this idea, I think for immigrants, you sort of always have to prove your worth. I deserve to be here, I provide this labor, you know, and so there's this li ke real dehumanization. There's total lack of focus on who you are internally.
Host Emily Wilson: [00:02:18] For a while, Lu has been thinking about creation myths and gardens like the Immortal Peach Garden and the Garden of Eden.
Artist Cathy Lu: [00:02:25] You know, the president at the time kept saying, oh, make America great again. In my mind I kept going further back in history, thinking about, oh, when was this time period America was great for like everyone, you know, you're like, oh yeah, it's a mythology. It's a myth. It's not real. But of course, having grown up in the United States, even though I wasn't brought up in religion, everyone kind of knows the Garden of Eden. So, I started thinking about that, oh, maybe this is what he's referring to.
And then the more I started thinking about that story, I thought, oh, you know, actually this story's not so great. It's like very based on like patriarchy and this idea of innocence being good, this idea that knowledge is [00:03:00] bad, you know, which is so not true.
Host Emily Wilson: [00:03:01] Lu created interior garden with tropes of classical Chinese gardens – rocks, water, a pond. There's a pile of scorched bricks with traffic cones and a wall of Asian woman's eyes based on real people, such as the artist Ruth Asawa. The eyes shed tears that fall into buckets and other receptacles. The third room had a large basin with 12 gold drains, and in the last room, visitors saw a hanging sculpture of Nua, a goddess who molds humans from clay.
Lu walked through the exhibition starting with a pile of singed bricks. She thought of this when she was doing a residency at Recology, and lots of bricks from construction came in also because of a story a friend told her when they were walking around San Francisco's Chinatown,
Artist Cathy Lu: [00:03:55] basically after the 1906 earthquake.
Um, and all the buildings [00:04:00] crumbled down or burnt down. Actually the city was gonna use that as a way to displace all the Chinese residents. And so when the Chinese residents heard about that, they were like, oh, you know, they came back and just started rebuilding themselves. And that's why you see these buildings with these weird, shiny bricks sticking out of them that are very irregular.
Just like those two things, seeing all these bricks, seeing all this construction happening in the Bay Area. And of course that's also very contentious too. Cause it's like sort of a mark of who is able to stay here, who's getting displaced. And then just also this idea of resilience I thought was really powerful.
These burnt bricks that would've normally been considered garbage 1906, like they're able to come back and use what was considered garbage to actually maintain their ability to stay.
Host Emily Wilson: [00:04:40] Ceramic traffic cones surrounded the bricks. Those came out of Lu thinking about borders.
Artist Cathy Lu: [00:04:50] As a ceramicist, I'm always thinking about this idea of, you know, you see ceramics in the museum and they have this sort of authority about them because they're in the museum.
I think like a lot of times we [00:05:00] try to think of cultural representation or cultural objects, and I think a lot of times we like to think of really grand like the Statue of Liberty, like represents how we feel about immigration. In actuality, these are the objects we use. This really represents how we feel about immigration.
I just really also love that they're. Like you're not meant to look at them. They're just sort of meant to like be used. It's a temporary thing, which I think just sort of adds the arbitrariness of how we feel about Certain groups are good. It's, oh no, they're bad now. It's like, oh, they're good again.
Host Emily Wilson: [00:05:30] The next room had what reviewers referred to as this show stopper of the exhibition.
It was called Peripheral Vision. And it was a wall of eyes based on real people. There were Bay Area artists like the late Ruth Asawa, known for her wire sculptures, and Christie Chan, who does film and installation. There were also the eyes of the Yellow Power Ranger and of Kathy Park Kong, the author of the book, Minor Feelings. The eyes [00:06:00] shed tears that fell into different containers.
Artist Cathy Lu: [00:06:03] So they're all crying out yellow tears, cause you know, in the weird racial colors, I would be considered yellow. And I also had been thinking about the mechanics of crying too, and just this idea of, oh, when you cut onions you cry. So basically I started taking the yellow onion skins and then boiling them in water.
That's what makes the water yellow.
Host Emily Wilson: [00:06:20] Growing up in Miami, Lu says when it rained, the ceiling would leak and they'd put out buckets to catch the water here. She wanted to make the tears falling from the eyes
Artist Cathy Lu: [00:06:32] visible. And that was kind of what I was going for. Just this idea of contain all these tears, but then also making people see it.
Cause I feel also a lot of times these difficult emotions. You're supposed to hide and pretend everything is cool. And so this is, for me, sort of put it out there, making this crime super visible.
Host Emily Wilson: [00:06:52] Lu says she's not sure where the next installation. The basin with gold [00:07:00] drains came from, but drains remind her of borders.
Artist Cathy Lu: [00:07:05] It's this poorest barrier between above and below ground. I don't know, I think it also just goes back to maybe like a childhood fascination. The fact you could see what's above ground. You don't know what's happening below ground. I don't know. I was thinking about that with plumbing. I have no idea how it's all connected, and it was just very strange for me.
So I actually made all of the drains just individually first as singular objects. And it took me just basically when I had the opportunity to do the show, that's when I kind of came up the idea to put 'em all together. Yeah, it's my version of a pond. It's not a full pond. It's kind of just water's pumping up through the drain just slightly and very slowly draining out.
Host Emily Wilson: [00:07:38]
The last room had a snake-like sculpture hanging from the ceiling called Nuwa’s Hands. Lu learned about the creation goddess when she read a book of myths to her nephew. As a ceramicist, the idea of creating people out of clay resonated with her, and she tries to channel Nuwa’s spirit while she works.
[00:08:00] Artist Cathy Lu: [00:07:59] The idea is that she was lonely, so she was making little figures out of the earth and it was taking too long, so she stopped making the figures.
So she just took a piece of string and then dragged it in the mud, and then when the mud dried on the string, she flaked it and all the little pieces became people, which I thought a maker of someone who works with clay. I was like, oh my God, she's a ceramicist.
Host Emily Wilson: [00:08:29] This is the part of the show called Three Questions, where in every conversation I have with artists, I end with the same questions to learn a little about them. Starting with what was the first time a work of art really struck you?
Artist Cathy Lu: [00:08:50] This memory always stands out to me as the first time I saw a Felix Gonzalez Torres piece. It says, A high school student. And I was lucky cause I got to go to this, like Miami has a lot of great like [00:09:00] public art schools. So I got to go to this art school and they would take us to the museum a lot. And I just remember the first time I saw this Felix Gonzalez tourist piece.
And I remember the person showing us around was, oh, you can actually take a candy. Is this art? You know, I had no context for it, but obviously it was such an unusual experience to see if a pile of candy and then being told you could take it within this museum context. And so of course now I know more about the context of the work, but at the time I just remember it burned in my mind.
What is happening? What's going on? This is still weird and. I don't know. That's just what I love about art. I think that's such a beautiful part of art is just sort of like it changes how you perceive things. It allows you to channel different experiences.
Bed Music: [00:09:38] .
Host Emily Wilson: [00:09:42] And when did you know that you were an artist?
Artist Cathy Lu: [00:09:47] I mean, I think from a young age I was like, yeah, art is cool. And so, you know, I was always doing the art club thing, you know, I was always trying to sign up for art classes and as a teenager I'd work at like different art camps. Yeah. I just always loved my art classes. I just didn't really think, I don't know how artists make money. I don't know how they sell things. So I had this idea, and of course my parents had a more stereotypical ex idea of, you know, they're like, you should be a doctor, a scientist, or a lawyer. Those are your options. We didn't move to this country for you to not make money and like not have a good life or better life or whatever.
Yeah, it took me a long time to sort of see it as a career path. I don't even know now that I see it as a, like a career path per se, but I do feel very dedicated to it. Like I just sort of know for myself, like I'm gonna keep making work.
Host Emily Wilson: [00:10:34] Finally, what's a place in the Bay Area you find creatively inspiring?
Artist Cathy Lu: [00:10:42] Actually, I love going to grocery stores. I don't know why. I've just always loved it, especially for me, like just because of the way I grew up in my own heritage. Like I love going to Chinese markets. For me, like I always find a lot of inspiration in Chinatown, like in Chinese supermarkets.
I don't know. It's a place where I always feel at [00:11:00] home sort of.
Host Emily Wilson: [00:11:16] And that's it for this week's episode of Art is Awesome. Thanks again to our guest, Richmond Ceramicist. Kathy Lu. You can see her work now at the Museum of Modern Art through May 29th. She's also part of a group show, fight and flight crafting a Bay Area life at San Francisco's Museum of Craft and Design on third Street. You can get more info and link to our work in our show notes.
Bed Music: [00:11:49]
Host Emily Wilson: [00:11:50] If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe and rate us wherever you find your podcast media. In our next episode, we will have a conversation with Lynn [00:12:00] Herschmann Leeson, an artist in her eighties who's been making films at multimedia work for five decades, and is just starting to get more recognition like going to the Venice Bienelle last year.
Art Is Awesome. Is a biweekly podcast dropping every other Tuesday. It was created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Goto of Go-To Productions. Our theme music is provided by Kevin McLeod. With Incom music, be sure to follow us on social media or visit our website till next time. [00:13:00]