female announcer: This program contains depictions of the naked body.

male announcer: On "Studio Space," Ngan Ho is a ceramicist whose unique and deeply personal work celebrates women's bodies.

Then a visit with Alme Allen, an educator and carver who passes the vital work of tribal traditions to the next generation.

"Studio Space" explores the thriving art colony in Northern California.

female announcer: This activity is funded in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency, and by viewers like you, thank you.

David Ferney: Hi, I'm David Ferney.

Kati Texas: And I'm Kati Texas.

Today on "Studio Space," we meet two artists exploring modern interpretations of their own cultural traditions.

David: I'll be talking with carver and painter, Alme Allen, about his fusion of traditional and contemporary art.

But first, Kati sits down with ceramicist Ngan, whose sculptures are deeply personal.

Ngan Ho: You know, I've always been kind of like a, how d'you call it, like a wild child, like a rebel, you know, just like a free spirit.

And you know, I do what I want.

♪♪♪ Kati: We're here with Ngan, a ceramicist working in Humboldt County.

Ngan, thanks for having us.

Ngan: Thank you for being here today.

Kati: How would you describe your art?

What is it that you-- what is it that you do?

Ngan: Okay, so I make ceramic planters.

I make ceramic sculptures, and I've been dabbling into conceptual work and making work that just pretty much expresses my identity and who I am.

I like playing with my hands and working with my hands and just being able to, like, walk around my art work and just be a part of my art work, you know, like that.

Kati: So what are you working on right now?

Ngan: Oh, so right now, I am working on a tri-breasted organic woodsy lady bust piece.

And it's just a maquette, 'cause I think I wanna make it bigger, yeah.

And this idea came because I was talking to my friend and she wants to commission a piece from me and she wants a three-breasted lady and I was like, "I like this idea," and then I took it into the studio and then I don't know, I just started adding wood texture and then the mushrooms and organic form.

Kati: How did you first get into ceramics?

Ngan: I remember we had a art teacher come in and she was the art on the cart lady.

She would, like, roll in with her cart of art and I was, "Oh, yes, it's art day," and I'd get so excited and I remember my--one of my first projects was this slab house that I made and then you cut out the windows and you put pictures of yourself or your family members in your window, but I only put my picture so it's my house.

And then, funny thing, like, I was going through my mom's stuff and I found my report card from kindergarten and it says: "Has a keen interest in the arts."

I was, like, "Wow, why didn't anyone ever tell me that?"

'Cause my mom can't read English, you know, so I just never knew.

I had to find out for myself, I guess.

I had to take my own journey.

Kati: Where did you grow up?

Ngan: Yeah, so I grew up in Orange County, in Anaheim, Garden Grove area.

Very Vietnamese populated.

It's I think the fourth or third highest Vietnamese population in the United States.

And I was born in Kuala Lumpur in 1992 and then two months later, moved over to the U.S. with just me and my mom.

Kati: So just you and your mom in Orange County?

Ngan: Mm-hmm.

Me and my mom and then later my grandma, my grandpa, my aunt, and my uncle, and my few cousins came over, yeah.

Kati: So what's that like being first generation?

Ngan: It was challenging, yeah.

Not gonna lie.

It was--it was difficult because Asian culture is, for me, opposite than American culture.

'Cause in Vietnamese culture it's very collectivistic, you know, you're-- you do everything as a whole.

And then in American culture, it's very individualistic, you know, you're unique, you're your own person, you know, you can think whatever you think.

So at home it was just like, "Why are you so dark?"

I got in trouble a lot for being tan and for-- Kati: Oh, you mean, like, literally dark?

Ngan: Dark, yeah, like dark-skinned.

Kati: Okay.

Ngan: Lay down, lay down, lay down, lay down.

Lay down.

Good girl.

Kati: Who's this?

Ngan: This is Fire.

Kati: Hi, Fire.

Thanks for joining us on "Studio Space."

Ngan: Yeah, she's my baby.

She's my baby.

Yeah, so it was interesting because, yeah, in Vietnamese culture, you know, fair skin is seen as beautiful and I was tanned 'cause I played outside a lot, you know, 'cause that's who I am, and so that was challenging.

And I don't wanna just like dump this all on you.

Kati: Oh, sure, yeah, but there were--there were expectations of how you should behave that were kind of like this mash-up of where your parents came from and also the, like, neighborhood you moved into.

Everybody has this version of a woman that you should be and that didn't sound like it fit exactly with who you wanted to be.

Ngan: Yeah.

Kati: You wanna be outside in the sun getting tanned.

Ngan: Yeah.

Kati: You wanna be doing your individual slab house project that's only got you in it.

Ngan: Yeah, I wanted to be, I don't know, creative but my mom always--so my name, Ngan, it means money in Vietnamese.

So she always drilled in me, you know, "You're gonna do well in school, you're gonna make money, and you're gonna buy your house and we're gonna live this American dream."

And she named me money so there was, like, pressure to make money and then, like, but my heart was like, "Oh, I wanna be an artist," you know?

So it's like, but I don't wanna displease my mom, you know, 'cause obeying your parents is, like, up there in Vietnamese culture.

So you can't.

So I have always wanted to, like, please my mom, you know?

But that's hard 'cause I also wanna please myself and make myself happy, you know, so.

Kati: Think a lot of people who end up as artists do it 'cause they don't fit the mold they're expected to be in.

Ngan: Yeah, and I just feel like I need it, you know, like, I needed art, like it's something that heals me.

Kati: When I look at your sculptures of your planters, I detect a theme.

Is there a particular subject matter that you like to explore?

Ngan: Yes, well, I've really gotten into exploring using breasts as a way of communicating, I guess, my femininity and also--so, breasts have always been, like, a touchy subject, you know, for me.

So, you know, they were always too big or too saggy and then you hear all the time, you know, like, "Oh, my boobs are this and that and this and that."

For me, it was, like, a way for me to express that boobs are beautiful, no matter what size, what color, what, you know, anything like that.

I hope I can help people just, like, feel comfortable in their body and feel beautiful with what they have.

Kati: So besides being generally pro breast or there's this empowering thing about exploring it as a symbol, is there symbolism to breasts or to baring them that goes beyond empowerment?

Ngan: I think it would, like, stem back to my mother and my quarrels with her and just how, like, breasts are something that, like, bond a mother and a child and it might stem from my mother.

Kati: Comfort?

Ngan: Comfort.

Kati: Sustenance?

Ngan: Yeah, sustenance.

Kati: So I'm seeing this and I see so much in this, a lot to unpack.

So you talk about breasts as comfort.

Obviously, there's these beautiful splashes coming out the top.

I love that.

Shape of it.

And then the--can you describe this structure?

Ngan: So, this piece here is supposed to represent those water pails, you know, you've seen--I don't know if you've seen the women in Asia, they carry everything on their shoulders and then there's two pails and it kind of came from this story my mom told me of how she used to work in the rice fields in Vietnam and she would carry, like, buckets of water to and from the fields to, like, water her plants and she was just saying how it was, like, back-breaking work, you know?

And I get emotional, but this piece is called "The Weight We Carry," and it's about my mother, I would have to say, and it's about-- it's supposed to look like milk drops, you know, and look--symbolize that pail.

Kati: It's beautiful.

I love it.

Ngan: Oh, thank you.

Kati: How do people react?

Ngan: It's interesting.

Let me tell you the story.

I had an art show.

It's the Four Women's Art Show and it was me and three other women artists, and I had a wall of my boobs, my planters, my boobie planters.

Kati: What it it-- you had a word.

It was--with the succulents in them?

Ngan: Uh-huh, my Succulent Series.

Kati: There you go, the Succulent Breast Series.

Ngan: So it was a wall of my Succulent Breast Series.

And a woman who saw it, she contacted me.

She was, like, "Oh, I really-- like, this wall really spoke to me, and it really moved me because my mom just had a, what is it when they chop off-- Kati: A mastectomy.

Ngan: Mastectomy 'cause she had breast cancer.

And so she was, like, "I would love to buy one of your pieces to send to my mom, you know, because she just lost a boob I'd like to give her a boob that she could, like, grow something out of."

Kati: Have you learned anything about yourself through exploring this form?

Ngan: Yeah, I think it's helped me accept my body and it's helped me 'cause these are molds of my actual breasts.

So it's--so taking something that I was so, I guess, ashamed or self-conscious about and turning it into art and making it something beautiful, I feel has helped me, like, come into who I am, you know, and be, like, comfortable in my own skin and feel beautiful, so hopefully I could help other people feel beautiful too.

Kati: Hey, Ngan, this has been really fascinating.

Thank you so much for having us.

And thank you for joining us on "Studio Space."

Charlie "Red Hawk" Thom: It's so true how these songs were sung long before I was born.

Alme Allen: But I'll always remember what Charlie said: at one time it was our generation to do this, and now it's your guys's turn.

And he says this in this really thick Karuk accent, really thick, and I'm hearing it in my head right now.

But he said one thing.

He said, "When you do it," he said, "you don't go there alone.

You take a lot of people when you do it."

I don't think the words really sunk in.

I figured it out later.

I mean, it was like be inclusive, don't do things alone, teach it.

Teach it.

♪♪♪ David: Today, we're with Alme Allen who is a Karuk and Yurok artist.

He does public murals, organizes youth workshops, art workshops, and he also creates carving workshops for young men and he has participated in numerous local and regional Native American art shows.

David: Thank you so much for joining us.

Alme: Yeah, thanks for having me.

David: You've done a lot and are very involved with youth, both art workshops and working on carving, and as well as, you know, one of your big things is restoring ceremonial sites.

Can you talk a little bit about working with the youth and sort of carrying on that culture and-- Alme: Actually, I did one of my first ones.

It was, geez, 15 years ago, something like that.

It was a ways back and I just did a small thing, sort of just a very intimate setup with just a few young guys.

We did some stools but you know what we also did is we worked on those adzes that we're using on this project today.

A lot of my first carving workshop really was building the tools.

And those tools came into play, like, down the road.

Alme: Yeah, yeah, now here's your chance except for there's cameras on you and everybody's watching, okay, no pressure.

So basically, don't move the elbow, don't move the shoulder.

All you really wanna start off with is just swinging the--letting the tool sort of do its thing, let it drop, lift and drop, then release it.

Just having that ability to bring it in where you want it, and then release it.

It seems easy but it's-- we're all finding out it's a little tough.

So just giving it the little tap and then working up the momentum.

So just give it where--just give it whatever you got is-- whatever you have will work.

We already found that out.

But sometimes the most irregular-looking adze work that we didn't like, once we got the torch in it, we ended up liking it the most.

All right, you're hired.

We've found our adzeman.

This is all natural split, all four sides.

We didn't have to chainsaw the edge to true it up.

All we're really looking to do is just relieve the edges a little bit with the draw knife.

male: How far up?

Alme: You come halfway, I come halfway.

male: Okay.

Alme: Good.

Flip it.

Yeah, that one.

There's not much we can do with that knot but maybe, like, the next plank we butt up against it, we just carve it out a little bit to go around that, instead of fighting through the knot with the draw knife.

You can fight it or you can try to outthink it a little bit, your choice.

Alme: That project of the actual rebuild, you know, kind of telling that story that, you know, the old way of carving versus, like, what we're doing today, in traditional carving and how we go about it today, you know, you're gonna notice all the power tools out here.

You know, we're adaptive culture.

We're gonna use everything that we can get our hands on, but in the end, you know, you're looking at a very traditional thing.

And so, you know, what we've done is getting rid of all that nasty chainsaw look, you know, and I seen this done years ago.

And so this is just, like, you know, the way I wanted to go about it was grinding it out, making it look weathered, and then showing these guys how to use those adzes over there.

It's not as easy as it looks, and I've been using that look on my stools for probably 17 years.

This was a lot of their first go at trying those tools out, and I think it looks great.

What I like about it the most is, like, you see everybody's touch on that 'cause in the end it's not gonna be just one person doing it.

In carving, in our traditional carving, you want that symmetry to be right on.

You want the lines to be straight.

You want those angles, those cut-outs, all of those things that make our mush paddles or our spoons, all that ornateness, like, right on, and then you're judged as a carver.

But now as a painter or contemporary artist, where I struggle and where I'm getting better and one of the things Brian worked with me on a little bit during that mural was, like, "You need to just let it happen."

You need to let it happen.

David: Need to be in the moment, yeah.

Alme: "Quit making that line straight," you know what I mean?

So that was--those were huge things to me and I'm, like, "What are you talking about?"

Well, that's that carver inside of me.

That's my father, that's my grandfather, that's what they did.

And that's what I have, and I can't deny that part of me, either.

But I think what I'm doing right now is I'm finding a way that these all come together.

The reason I chose that image for the Eureka Street Arts Festival, the mural's called Arareethivthaaneen, Indian Land in the Karuk language, that's my grandson and that's like a graphic transfer, you know?

But I chose that, you know, and I haven't really told anybody that.

I chose that image because there's not really a straight line in it, you know?

I mean, there's the snake nose in the background but that's really just watermark.

But as far as that large head shot, about 18 foot head shot of my grandson, it's like yeah.

But it's really this little Indian boy looking off into the distance, that somewhat stoic look, and how do you get that out of a two-year-old kid, right?

David: Almost into the future.

Alme: Yeah, looking off into that future.

What is that future gonna be, right?

And so I kind of chose that for a couple of reasons is, one, I just wanted to do it, I was so fond of the way that graphic turned out that I wanted to paint that.

And then no straight lines in it, and the other thing that just I stay away from is human form.

So I challenge myself.

And you know, I'm not, like, in the sense a trained artist where I don't hold a degree, I didn't finish up school, I started, I dropped out.

Started having family, started making money.

But these are all things I was always good at.

I was just good at 'em so I didn't really have to work hard at 'em, I could just do it.

Whatever I thought of, could I make my body and my hands do what my mind sees?

And so I never really struggled with that.

But I always stayed away from human form so I'm like, "Darn it, I'm gonna do it."

And the driving force was, "Yeah, it's my grandson, so let's do it."

So graded it out and did it and it was, like, really, really gratifying work and then for my 12-year-old daughter to be, like, kind of like the co-artist on the thing, is like, "Okay, where is the next generation?

We're starting on this one early."

David: Were some of your recent projects like the Eureka Walkway project, can you tell us a little bit about those projects?

Alme: Yeah, so I just totally pulled it right off of the mural that Brian and I did in 2000.

And here I took it to 2018 and I put it on this ground surface.

And you know, if you know Brian's work, that spiral is called "Into the Spawning Ground," you know, and that poem that goes with that.

And it's about generations, you know, it's about moving forward and it's about, you know, passing things on.

David: Now, you are very connected with your cultural heritage.

You're an artist in a pretty active arts community here, but you're also really a contemporary artist that is looking forward and doing new things.

So I just wanted to ask how do you balance those two things of your connection with your cultural heritage and being a contemporary artist?

Alme: For me, everything starts with the traditional work that I do.

And it's a huge part of my inspiration.

I feel I've always been an artist from day one, and I'm a maker.

I've always been able to create with my hands, but it's really been, like, tradition in that traditional and cultural work that's really grounded me.

And lately, and I say lately, like the last 18 years, it's really been an avenue where I can impact my community.

My experience in embracing that kind of work and then showing other people how to do it.

You spoke of the contemporary, that part of my art I don't feel has really manifested the way that I would like it to yet, because of that commitment to culture and community.

But I'm okay with that.

When I have the chance, you do see the things like the public murals.

You do see the things like the concrete version of my traditionally carved stool.

But it all ties right back to, you know, a really strong, rich culture that we can draw from.

David: Yeah, well, one of the things that I really appreciate about the Native culture up here is that it's a living, breathing thing that's not just a view of the past.

And I wonder if part of what you consider your role as an artist is to connect those dots from the past to the present to the future.

Alme: Yeah, I certainly do.

And you know, realizing that we're very blessed to come from the culture that we come from and it is very rich cultural arts.

It's a very rich land, you know, we're very fortunate people.

So acknowledge that.

Hopefully, in the end of all of this, my message is always that we need to take care of the land.

Looking back on it, I realize a lot of those old people that I knew growing up, they really were our saviors, because they fought through some struggles.

You know, there were just a handful of 'em and we were so lucky that those tradition bearers, those cultural people, you know, passed language, they passed the ceremony on.

You know, the ceremony's what we all see but there's all of this other stuff that really makes up a culture.

David: Right, and really, and revived dances that no one was doing.

Alme: Yeah, so that is a good example, like, our world renewal.

Only the prayers were getting done for a long time, and until that revitalization period which, lo and behold, it paralleled the Civil Rights Movement, you know, people were--that's where people were at the time.

David: I love that idea about bringing balance back to the world.

Alme: Yeah, so that's sort of what I wanted to share with the entire community and so I did that quote.

David: Yeah, "As sure as the sun sets, it will surely rise again, and it's up to us as to how we choose to stand in tomorrow's light."

Alme: Right, so how are we gonna do that?

David: So it's a challenge in a way?

Alme: It's a challenge.

And you know, can we do it collectively?

I don't mean we all have to hold hands but we need to support those people.

We need to remember to support others.

Otherwise, we're not gonna cover any ground at all.

That project, it really meant a lot to me because it was a big--it was a big deal.

David: Yeah, it was full circle, yeah.

Alme: And you know, when you're going down a road and you're showing up to your project and you get goosebumps and you might tear up a little bit-- David: Something's right, yeah.

Alme: Something's moving in the right direction.

And there was a couple days like that and that's what I really get out of doing community work is that it makes a difference to people, you know?

You won't see a lot of Alme Allen gallery pieces hung up on walls here and there.

That's not what I'm doing.

♪♪♪ David: We hope you enjoyed today's episode.

Kati: To visit with other Humboldt County artists, or to watch other great shows about local issues, go to keet.org.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ CC BY ABERDEEN CAPTIONING 1-800-688-6621 WWW.ABERCAP.COM announcer: This activity is funded in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency, and by viewers like you, thank you.