(soft music) - Printmaking is a very detail-oriented medium.

It's just, it's like you have to, like, really focus and do it step by step, like, really focus and not get distracted from anything, so you can make a lot of mistake.

And then probably it's like experiment too.

It's like you never know what you're gonna get.

Every single print is gonna be a little different.

(upbeat music) (wood scraping) I am a Vietnamese printmaker based in Mankato, Minnesota, and I make woodcut print.

My focus is on Vietnamese culture and American culture.

When I spend the last seven and a half years, I try to plan the two cultures together just to share my life experiences here and also the history of Vietnam and the customs.

When we talk about Vietnam, like, lots of people are gonna think about the Vietnam War.

And then I feel like it's a little limit 'cause I want to share, like, the good part, the beautiful part of Vietnam, like, what we have.

(upbeat music) I'm from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

I lived in the south of Vietnam is formerly named Saigon.

We have a lot of mountains.

The Mekong Delta River.

My family lives in the area that, like, we have endless rice field and lotus field.

Also, lotus is our national flower as well, so that's pretty to me.

(upbeat music) So I wanted to study abroad and I decided I wanted to go to Japan, and then my family said, "Let's make a deal that if you can survive in the U.S. for the one year, then we will let you decide whatever you wanna do."

So they didn't want to fund for me to go to Japan.

I wasn't into it.

I just hated that idea, but now I can appreciate it that I'm here.

I arrived to the U.S. and then I went straight to Mankato.

So it was December of 2015 and it was winter.

So my first-ever winter in my life.

It's just different.

It's like in my home country, it's, like, 90 degrees all year long.

So it's like, it's like more like exciting to me.

It's like, "Oh, it's not hot anymore."

It's good.

This is one of my very early prints when I first started.

This is called "Trapped in the Cheese."

At the time I couldn't find any food without cheese unless I asked for it.

It was like, "Why cheese everywhere?"

It's like, you know, and this is a cheese tray.

It's funny, I don't know, it's just so American.

So yeah.

You see here is the Vietnamese pitcher with traditional clothing and the hat is the Vietnamese coffee phin filter that we use to make, like, single-use coffee, and the hat is, like, traditional hat.

(soft music) I came here for a totally different degree.

I was going for biology with a minor in graphic design.

I grew up in a family of business and science, like, art is like like, "No, no."

You got to be, I don't know, a banker, a businesswoman, or a scientist, like, "We don't do art here.

Art's like wasting time."

And then I took my first printmaking class, like, in the second semester and then I fell in love.

And then I just, like, switch completely to printmaking.

And now I become an artist.

(soft music) I'm not sure about, like, all of the, like, younger family now, but, like, to my family we are a little conservative.

And my mom has a lot of thing to do with my personal life and that's why I got so frustrated.

And then I decided to, like, you know, go away.

Now it's like they got used to it too.

So they had to fit with me, my way, so I have my own life.

That's what I like about the U.S. and, like, being like so far away from home that they care about me, but, like, in a more like relaxed way.

It took them a while to, like, to really, like, kind of start to understand what I'm doing.

Like I explain to my mom, like, anytime I call her and she's like, "I don't get it.

Why are you doing it, like, why?

Like, why printmaking?

Why art?"

So I think I always have that soft spot for Vietnam.

I just, I'm afraid of, like, if I ever visit home and then I don't wanna come back here.

I miss the people on the street.

I miss all the street foods and I miss my family as well.

(soft music) I grew up pretty Western-ish and then I wasn't really into, like, Vietnamese culture at all back in the day, like, and then it's like when I came here, then people keep asking me about, "Oh, how is Vietnam and what do you have there?"

I'm like, "Oh, I don't really know."

So that's, like, I think being here is making me find my roots.

I'm just, like, been doing a lot of research about Vietnamese culture and then what we have in the past.

There's different methods in printmaking.

We have woodcut.

We have screen printing.

We have lithography, and etching intaglio, but I specifically really into woodcut.

I'm not sure why.

It's, like, it's very ancient techniques.

It's so easy to make.

You could make it anywhere.

You don't really need a fancy tool to do that.

And I'm very curious about, like, what people did in the past, like, a thousand years ago how do people spread the word?

How do they share information?

We have a woodcut village in North Vietnam.

And I would love to, like, learn more about that and then try to, like, bring it back.

Woodcut is, like, the closet way to do that.

And then woodcut, it's not hard.

It just, like, take a lot of time to make one big block like two by four feet.

If I, like, really work on it, like, if I'm not like distracted from anything else I just like work, work, work every day, well, a month or two.

After carving the block, the next process is gonna be printing.

You should just, like, prepare all of the ink and roll the slab and it's, like, ink up the block.

(paint roller swishing) If the studio have, like, a big enough press for the big block, then I can run it through the press.

I don't have that access here in Mankato, so I usually, like, hand print it.

(paper scraping) I'm not a big talker so, like, I think a lot, but I'm quiet.

I don't talk a lot.

Like I don't really talk about my emotions.

Sometimes it's, like, it's also a lot.

So, like, I put them into my work.

I try to make it look, like, playful, but there's educational stuff going on.

Like I want to teach people about the culture and then if they, like, recognize my story and that's good.

If not, that's fine too.

It's, like, if they appreciate the print, you know, the playfulness is totally fine, that's great.

So this is one of my favorite prints ever.

I got inspiration from a picture of my mom when she was pretty young.

And I made the print in 2020 when COVID hit.

And at the time, I felt very confused and then a lot of anxiety it was like, I don't know what's gonna happen.

Like, what if I couldn't make it, what if my mom wouldn't make it?

And then I had, like, nightmare, I don't know, or a dream that my mom study abroad instead of me, so.

So I made the print with Mankato tower, water tower, that I really love to see all the time.

To me, like, in the U.S. all the water towers, there's name on it, it's very unique.

It's like we don't have that in Vietnam.

So we have water tower.

We don't have name on the water tower.

To me that's, like, a very cool thing, so yeah.

I send it to my mom, the picture to my mom.

And she, like, she loved it.

It's like, "Oh, it's what you're doing?

Okay, I kinda get it now."

Blah, blah, blah, you know.

(soft music) There's no single day that I feel like I want to do something else.

Like it was, like falling in love.

I can drop anything else to do print.

You ask me to go out, I'm just like, "Sorry, I'm working on my block."

It's like there's no, no.

I was like, I'm so into it.

I never felt like that before.

I feel like it's like, it's a very, what's the word for it?

A blast.

I finally found, like, what I really love.

It is a very tough journey, but it's all good because I learn a lot and I grow a lot, too, through prints.

(soft music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Postcards" is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by: Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Wyndham, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year-round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's Arts Calendar, an arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central Minnesota.

On the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 96.7 Kram, online at 967kram.com.

(bright music)