For many years, I have been working on a series of abstracts on paper called Strength. I started out making them 6x9inches, then was making them 24x30. I tired of them and put them aside but I did want to find a way to put them into small pieces, that were more durable so that I could give them to people to carry around. I tried to do them in class. They actually were neat, tactile but glass to work with was not that enjoyable for me. So, I never really did them in spite of spending hundreds of dollars on the glass. Now, years later, while in Vietnam, I discovered lacquer. In Hanoi, there is a large art tourist trade. Artist will paint reproductions of everything from famous living Vietnamese artists to Renoir, and everything in between. They also make traditional like pieces for tourists to buy as mementos. I found some tiny lacquer pendants at one store and decided about a month and half before I left to make the strength series into lacquer pendants. The store worker quickly gave me the name and number of the artist, which was surprising since it would've been more like them to try to work a deal and take a piece of the pie. I contacted the artist via my 20 year old Vietnamese teacher. I ended up making a bunch of these pieces. It took nine toxic days. I paid the artist $75 for his time, the blank lacquer pieces and for materials. He would've done it for half that but I felt that it was important to value a fellow artist's time. I of course regretted it later when I tried to hire him to do some non-art project.
