Asian-American Woman Looks At Life Through Lens Of Art

(This blog was originally published under the headline of "Art Lessons: Hello From Federal Way" at a website at the News Tribune, a daily newspaper in Tacoma, WA on 9/21/07 as part of a reader generated section entitled "In Your Neighborhood".

From time to time I’ll be blogging for you under the banner of Art Lessons as a continuing correspondent from the South King County's emerging metropolis of Federal Way, Washington where I'll attempt to follow as a long-time resident the advice of our current city slogan which exhorts "It's All Within Reach..."

Since my childhood, art is the magnifying glass which looking back from the vantage point of my now middle years, comes as naturally as if it was pre-wired into my brain as apparently reading a circuit board was to my little brother at the same age.

In a family widely overloaded with engineers who enjoyed the challenge of playing with numbers and collecting data , my brother is the more standard model. When our Dad, one of the Boeing companies then many Asian-American electrical engineers showed the two of us one of those do-it-yourself home educational kits from 60’s where you learned how to make a radio or whatever, I noticed to my absolute horror as I glanced over at little brother that both guys shared a bright gleam in their eyes.

I saw absolutely nothing. They saw possibilities. When they looked at what to me was a rather non-descript though orderly collection of odd-shaped components mounted on a rather ugly but serviceable piece of composition board, a light bulb went on inside their brains because a connection had been made.

To this day if you showed me the same board, I still can't see a thing. The mental distance between us all had just become a vast mental crevasse that I could recognize even at such a tender age, would separate us in small and fundamental ways the course of our entire lifetimes in fully predictable ways.

The benefit of this early rude shock was that I was given an early introduction to the topic of perspective. Heretofore, if I had thought about it at all I would have been quite comfortable as few people claim to think that what I saw was what everyone else in the world saw when looking at the world because it is plain to see if something is in front of your eyes.

Today I’m a older person who finds myself frequently throwing up my hands observing the continuing tendency for topics of the day being discussed by people who know better, for ease of argument as if everything in the world can be eventually reduced to only two sides and opposing ones at that.

In the multi-dimensional universe we live in, isn’t it frustrating to think that we might inadvertently as a society delude ourselves because it is too easy or too hard to keep in mind that seeing (even in two dimensions) is quite different from the value or lack of value that you put on it?

Fortunately, the early lesson in perspective with my Dad and brother allowed me since to factor that my view of the world is just one of many. Art as a looking glass it possible to note there are often several choices of entry into any subject as there are certainly much more than two points of exit!

This kind of exercise in thinking is a major reason it is a tragedy that arts education has fallen into third place status or even dropped entirely by legislative economists on all levels and frustrated local taxpayers in my lifetime alone as regrettably expendable frill or a subject given other pressing considerations like preparing our youth for college and a career at Microsoft that a financially strapped and responsible society just cannot afford.

Imagine what Western art would be like if our great artists were held to this limiting standard that everything can be reduced to only two sides? Come to think of what the world would look like if all the trees, hillsides and wildlife we see came in only one and two dimensions? Consider a world in only black and white or featuring only two textures, smooth or rough?

As some enjoy folks in our midst (ABC Sports comes to mind circa the era of the late Roone Arledge) have told us that they look at life in frames of an athletic contest while peppering their conversation with sports analogies to describe their personal approach to the issues and challenges that come in life, I often find in art a similar platform and hope to have the opportunity to share some of my observations in the near future with you!