Goals and outcomes
My main goal for this project was to get to know more about my culture through the embroidery art, and introduced it to Southern Utah University students along the way. If all of the works I had put into this project be acknowledged, then I might consider another possibility for my future beside Biology. Actually, I had always been wanting to make a difference with Art, and to prove to my parents that it was not a hopeless path that would make no money. This created a good opportunity for that too.
To make the project happen, I went back to Viet Nam last summer 2016 and asked for my parents’ help in finding the places where people did traditional embroidery arts. It took us around two months to find a place like that, which was in the middle part of Viet Nam, Dalat. Moreover, that place was where people started double-sided embroidery. Double-sided embroidery art was a type of art that used clothes as canvas, used threads as paints, and a needle as a brush. Nevertheless, because this kind of art was difficult to make, took a lot of time and patience, the place was not very well-known to the Vietnamese people. Additionally, it usually took around three months for an artist to embroider a piece of painting.
When my family got there, the tour guide of the embroidery company told us that we could not take any picture when there were a lot of people around. That would encourage people to take pictures as well, and ended up blocking the way. Thus, I could only go to the areas where there was anyone else besides us to take pictures. At first, I thought I could buy a few embroidery pieces to put on my showroom when I went back to SUU. Sadly, the embroidery pieces were expensive, especially the double-sided portraits. Hence, I could only manage to buy one least expensive and smallest double-sided embroidery piece, which was a landscape painting.
Although I did learn a lot about the Art of Embroidery last summer, especially double-sided embroidery, I did not actually have time to work on making a piece of embroidery art like I was planning to because my Biology major was conflicting with it. At first, I planned to make a piece of art to show that I had learn and experienced the processes of embroidering a painting. Then, I would open a small showroom to show my pieces and the ones I had bought to SUU student while making a new piece in front of the audience. However, because I did not have time to work on making any piece, I decided to skip that step and just showed all of the art pieces that I had bought as the last step instead. Therefore, I participated on the International Week last November to introduce about my country. On November 12th, I opened a small workshop like every foreigner who presented their country at the Student Living Room, and used the opportunity to show the embroidery pieces I had bought during the trip. The presentation took two hours. The students and faculty loved the pieces I had brought and asked a lot of questions about them. I had a good time answering them all. The only thing I regretted was that I could not show people how to make the pieces right there and the pieces I was supposed to make.
Deliverables
I want to deliver this project through a small Art Exhibition on campus with all of finishing products of my learning experience. I also want to use demonstrations from other artists to tell the history behind the Art.
That was my original plan. However, because the embroidery pieces were expensive, I only bought one piece of double-sided embroidery art piece and two landscape one-sided pieces. I did not have enough art pieces to create an Art Exhibition. Luckily, I opened a workshop in the International Week to show my project and talked about the history and the processes behind.
View more deliverable pictures in the Deliverable section.