[Tom] This week on Arizona Illustrated settling in Flagstaff, [Jimmy] it was a prearranged marriage, so he saved enough money to go to China to marry my mother.

[Tom] The show goes on, [Colin] even though the exhibition couldn't happen around its original imagined timeframe It was really critical for everybody involved that the exhibitions to happen.

[Tom] And this week's favored place, Armory Park [Valeria] Armory Park has become one of my new places of contemplation and appreciation through each breath.

[Tom] Welcome to Arizona Illustrated, I'm Tom McNamara.

We're here inside the Arizona History Museum, where stories about Arizona's history abound.

In fact, our first story takes us back in time.

You know, back in the 1880 is the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad begin to lay track in a small settlement called Flagstaff.

With the railroad came workers from many nationalities, including Chinese men.

Now, it wasn't until 1916 that the first Chinese family settled in town.

And over the years, the Wong June family made a name for themselves as their family grew along with their businesses and landholdings.

And now, over one hundred years later, the youngest sibling shares their story.

(train rolls) (contemplative string music) - Somewhere down the road, someone's going to want to wonder what their roots were.

I decided to research it because I am in my eighties, now, and I am the last sibling that can do this.

Hi ladies.

- Hi.

- Hello.

- My name is Jimmy June Wong.

I'm number 12 of a family of 12, and my parents' name was Wong June, and Dew Yu Wong.

(lively string music) My family was the first Chinese family to settle in Flagstaff.

The biggest surprise I had was that I learned that my father was not born in China.

He was actually born in San Francisco.

That was the key to the story.

- [Girl 1] I literally think you were this tall.

- [Girl 2] Do you think so?

- Hi, Moy Moy.

- Oh, hi.

- This is my little niece, and that's my little nephew, over there.

(woman laughs) These are all my little nephews and nieces.

- [Man] Yeah.

Even though we're all taller than you, except for Moy.

- Sorry.

- Don't rub it in.

I can't help it.

- I didn't really know we were the first Chinese family in Flagstaff.

Uncle Jimmy told me.

How'd you learn about it?

- Well, we were the only Chinese here, and I, there was no one else except the Cooks.

There were a few single men that worked in the restaurants, here.

(friendly guitar music) - [Sacha] When the Wong family arrived, around 1915, Flagstaff was pretty small, at that time.

There was around 2000 people, give or take.

Here in Flagstaff, there had been some Chinese folks coming through town.

It was a very transient population.

And, then, often, it was single men.

So, they would move on to different jobs, or different areas, after that.

So it wasn't really until the Wong's that a Chinese family settled.

- My grandfather, I think he came over around 1860.

And he came through Mexico, not through the U.S., because it was too hard, and too expensive.

So, he worked in the gold mines, and worked his way up.

But his, his goal was still to go to the, get to the gold fields, in California, and worked his way up, through Nogales, when it was still a territory.

Then, finally he got to San Francisco.

And so my grandfather, he married a woman.

She was older than he was.

She was already in San Francisco.

And they had a baby, and that was my father.

My father kicked around Chinatown all his teenage years.

And, when it came time, he, it was a dead end street there for him.

So, his father told him to try Prescott.

They were hiring people to work.

They had several low producing mines, around Prescott.

So, that's when he left Chinatown, and he worked there.

And, when he was there, his father told him it was time to get married.

But there was a snag.

- [Sacha] In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

It was the first time any ethnic group was barred from coming into the country.

And many of the Chinese immigrants already in America were not allowed to become citizens, along with many other restrictions.

- There were not many eligible women for wives, and Chinatown had a network, and it was a prearranged marriage.

So, he saved enough money to go to China, to marry my mother.

They had a child.

He was over there a few years.

And, then, he came back, mainly because he couldn't bring them back, bring them into the U.S.

So, they, the elders, had advised him that he had to be a citizen to bring his family over.

That's when he started applying for a birth certificate.

He got the documents that his father had entered through Nogales.

And that's how it got started.

So, they booked passage, came over in steerage, in the bottom of the boat.

My mother never saw daylight, the whole trip.

She said she almost died.

She was so sick, nauseated.

But, anyway, they all went through Angel Island, and they all got interrogated.

And my mother, who had to go through a very vigorous physical examination, in fact, it came to be, she was sick because she was pregnant with a baby.

So, she got through that.

And that's how they got into the U.S. (gentle guitar music) When my father and his family first arrived, they were going to work in the laundry, which my father had already established, right down this corner.

(vehicles glide) And they were going to work every day.

And that's how they were going to make a living.

The original laundry was a small two room house.

And the laundry was in part of it.

My mother washed with a washboard.

They used a hand ringer, hung the clothes on a clothesline.

And, when it was cold, she hung them inside.

And they all helped.

Seven of the children were born on the second floor of the laundry.

As soon as she was physically able, she went back to work, after a birth.

My father was there.

He was a glad-hander.

He worked hard and never broke the law.

And that's the way he got around the laws, because there were a lot of laws, they were aimed toward the ethnic groups, and the Chinese, especially in Flagstaff.

It was prevalent, then.

- [Sacha] The Chinese exclusion act did have a big impact in Flagstaff.

So, everyone who was moving here would have known about that act, and seen, in the papers, other places where people were being discriminated against, or treated poorly.

And the same thing happened here in Flagstaff.

There was a group put together, an anonymous group, called themselves the Committee, and they were trying to intimidate people into leaving town.

It was very vague threats, but we do have the records in the newspaper.

(flowering music) - The siblings, my brothers, especially were good athletes.

And they were very good in sports.

And that helped the image because they were good athletes and they helped the teams win.

And my father was very proud of that.

And he gained a lot of respect from the community through that.

My father, when he ordered new staples and new goods from San Francisco, he always included some lottery tickets.

And eventually he, and he subscribed to the Chinese newspaper from there, and he found his number.

And he won the lottery, $20,000.

And that's how he started buying the property from that corner all the way to San Francisco Street.

He had enough money from the lottery to equip a commercial laundry, now.

It was not a hand laundry anymore.

It was my father's idea, from the beginning, that all these children that he had fathered were going to work forever in the laundry, here.

It was a commercial laundry, and they were all going to work together, and live together the rest of their lives.

So, that's why he built this big 10 room house, behind us.

You know, he never got to live in this house.

Believe it or not.

He's the only one in the whole family, that never lived in this house.

My father passed away.

He was hit by a school bus.

It was in a accident, and he was injured, and they could not diagnose his condition.

And he was in such pain for so long that he finally went to San Francisco, to the Chinese hospital, in Chinatown, to be treated by Chinese physicians.

And that's where he died.

(melancholy guitar music) My mother, she was the wife; she could not own the property.

That was the law.

If you were not a citizen, married or not, you could not own the property in your name.

So, it was in one of my brother's names.

My father died when I was six, and my mother died when I was twelve.

She died from a gun accident, in a hunting accident.

(flowing percussive music) I remember the day when your great grandmother was buried here, with all the townspeople, and all the relatives.

74 years ago, in here.

- Yeah.

- Your great grandmother died a long time ago.

Her dying words with my sister, Margaret, and my brother, Bill, were that they would take care of the minor kids, where there were three of us, were minors.

It united the family.

It solidified the family.

(mystical music) - [Sacha] We decided (couple discusses) to include Dew Yu Wong in the Resilience Exhibit.

She helped to run the business with her husband.

She lost him, faced a number of tragedies in her life and overcame them, took care of her kids, helped with the business.

So, we wanted to really highlight her resilience.

- [Jimmy June Wong] I think my father would be proud of all of his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, on down the line.

We always worked hard.

Everybody worked hard.

Even though they didn't have a formal education, everybody was, they were good at their trades, and they were good at their occupations, and they all did well, every one of them.

- Oh... - We stored Pinto beans in there.

- Oh, okay.

- And all the mice used to run over to our house from there.

(man laughs) Well, being part of the first Chinese family, I think it was a great honor.

(crow cries) And it was a wonderful accomplishment.

If my dad had not pursued a citizenship, a birth certificate, it probably would have never happened because my mother probably could've never come over.

And it was because of his consistent efforts it happened.

(beautiful Chinese music) You can visit the Arizona Historical Society Pioneer Museum in Flagstaff and see the resilience exhibit that features do Hugh Wang.

The museum also has copies of Jimmy Jun Wong's book, Never Alone.

[Tom] Imagine working for years on your final thesis art exhibition only to have it canceled.

Well, it happened in twenty twenty two graduating master of fine arts students at the U of A.

During their final stages of show preparation, the pandemic brought it all to a screeching halt.

But all was not lost.

Fourteen months later, many of these artists were able to return, allowing for the show to go on.

(dramatic music) - I've had this space in my mind for like five years.

When I was just looking at graduate programs and like looking at this program I looked at the Joseph Gross Gallery and I was like, that's where I'm having my thesi So, this is a quick tour, starting at the very front of my apartment, began with just messy studio table over here.

My name is Kenzie Wells, I am a third year in the Master of Fine Art program here at the University of Arizon And my predicament is (chuckles) that my thesis show for graduation that I've been working on this entire year, has been questionably canceled, but as of right now, it's postpo - The MFA Show is an always a wildly ambitious endeavor.

I've been here four and a half y every year, I've been really impressed with the student's ability to bring forward really large-scale projects in exciting ways.

- Right now, I expected to be actually at this moment in the museum installing my thes - Which is kind of like the culmination of what we work toward as grad students.

- The thesis show for grad students in the School of Art it's the dissertation, like that's the point (laughs).

- This developed so rapidly and the news was changing so much every day.

- They were just kept unfolding like we got new information ever - Suddenly we start getting thes - The emails, emails like millions of emails.

- And then the next day, you know, it's like thesis is being postponed.

- (sighs) Every day it was worse - The day after that it's like, we have to close the studios.

- My heart just sank.

- My thesis work, which for me specifically has been, you know, a culmination of three years worth of work.

- You have to acknowledge the disappointment, right?

That happens as a result of realizing that certain plans are not gonna be able to come to in the way that they are originally imagined.

- [Kenzie] I also had a moment o like I'm not sure what to do, I just graduated, there's no job to be found.

A lot of my friends did actually I stayed, I felt very alone, but at the same time, I knew if I had like gotten in my car and left, I wouldn't have really...

I'd be going to nothing.

- Even though the exhibition couldn't happen around its originally imagined t it was really critical for everybody involved that the exhibition still happen And so what we're looking at about 14 months later is the realization of that commitment that was made on the part of everybody involve to see this through.

- [Lady] Wow.

That's crazy - [Ladies] Hi.

- [Woman] Nice job, congrats - [Student] (clapping) Thank you, thank you.

Is Farel here?

- For the past five years that I've been here, I've been working with Environmental Research and Environmental Science Labora labor organizers that were involved in mining communities.

And so through those interaction I was able to create this experience that highlight rural stories in Arizona, and rural mining community member's stories in Arizona.

One of the pictures I took from like up on that road, I think you can see your house from here?

I was looking.

That's why it's so important to be able to schedule these viewings, and actually have people that have contributed to the project, come in and see it, and interact with it in a more engaged way.

It's so satisfying when you're waiting and something has so much buildup.

It's been a huge accomplishment, so, I am so grateful to be here and to actually get it out there finally.

- So, this is the, Alice Chaiten Baker Interdisciplinary Gallery, it's our brand new gallery at the Center for Creative Photography.

It was supposed to open in April of 2020, and it was going to begin with the MFA students in 2020.

And so this is an opportunity for them to come back a year later, and are poetically gonna be the first installation that we have now.

A lot of students especially contemporary artists are thinking about installation as an important part of their practice, right?

So, in order to have it actually installed in the gallery, is to fully realize the pieces.

My project, essentially what it is, basically I was taking different photographic images, and turning them into graphic musical scores, by putting the lines of the staff over the images, and having them interpreted by 11 different musicians.

(acoustic music) This is a little kind of magazine, you just hover over the QR code, it should open a little video, and then you can see the musician performing.

(high pitch violin music) So, what's happening in these boxes, is you can see live improvisations of the scores by different musicians playing on the back of the box.

I wanted to really create a space that kind of felt like you were able to enter, enter a different space, like a more surreal space.

Also just like a really (chuckles) funny time to be making such interactive work, right?

When COVID started and then kind of finding out, mm-mm, like, are we really gonna be interacting with artworks like anymore?

So, it feels really good to actually just have had even just a few people coming in all interacting with the work.

That was like the best part so far.

- I studied environmental humanities actually in college, and so going to Art School for a graduate program was kind of a big leap.

Putting the show on was definitely extra meaningful for me in particular, because I feel like this is the first body of work that I felt comfortable showing, that I was like excited to show.

It started with my grandmother getting sick, and one of the last times that I ever saw her, I started to take photographs of the shadows of the trees that were in her neighborhood.

And I started exploring that vis just like looking at different ways to represent just the tree shadows kind of divorced from the tree itself.

And I was starting to connect it to my grief for losing the forest and this kind of larger what we call ecological grief.

So, I was very interested in the kind of like radiations of black and white, and the interplay of light, and kind of making the prospective seem very confusing.

To me it's very intimate, and it really sucks (chuckles) to like be denied, you know, having other people be able to experience that intimacy with the work that I created.

- It's wild to see it actually unfold in such a kind of clean and cohesive way, but I do think there's something very specific about being in grad school that pushes you so far (laughs heartily) to the point where sometimes you wanna scream, you know, sometimes it's too much.

But that drive and that push are definitely like things I wouldn't have personally gotten unless I did grad school.

A lot of the pieces in this show offer that sort of idea about bathrooms or bathing, or looking at yourself in the mirror, all those things that you do to care for yourself.

As much as you try to do that with something like trauma, it's always gonna be there, no matter what.

Physical exhibition for this type of work is extremely important.

One of the biggest materials I use is iridescence, the moving liquid nature of so many surfaces in this show can't necessarily be grasped unless you're like walking physically around it.

Even a video wouldn't quite capture, like seeing your own reflection and then being like, oh, like I can see myself in that experience as well.

And that relate-ability, it's very much internal and physical.

- This is the first time that we've had anyone back in our space, and to be able to see it come to life in this way, and especially in our brand new has been kind of that horizon line that we've all been looking for.

- For them to come back and commit to this exhibition in the same way we would have seen them commit to it had they still been fully immersed in the program, that was pretty amazing to watch I'm not sure I know of any other university nationwide that I've heard of that's followed through in that way with MFA Thesis Exhibition that was canceled because of COVID.

- Then we didn't know when it would be able to happen if ever, just because the world was kind of on hold.

But it really does kind of provide that closure that I think a lot of us have been waiting for, for this past year.

(gentle music) When architect Valeriya Moraga was asked to select, write about and eventually narrate a personal illustration about one of her favorite places in southern Arizona, all she needed to do was to walk out her front door and into the historic and comforting streets of her neighborhood, Armory Park.

As the world has changed so much over the past few months, I learned to appreciate things that are closer to home.

(light instrumental music) After I finish my workday from my computer in my bedroom the one thing I crave the most is some time outside.

(light instrumental music) Armory Park neighborhood has provided this and so much more.

(light instrumental music) Calmness, curiosity and awareness are some of the things I feel when I step outside on my late afternoon walks.

I live in one of Tucson's historic neighborhoods dating back to the early 1900s.

It's architecture consists of different style buildings from bungalows, Victorian and contemporary.

(light instrumental music) As much as the architecture is engaging, there's another thing that draws more attention to me.

The people that each home represents.

(light instrumental music) From the landscaping, front porch benches, chairs, couches, small tables with coffee mugs, books and much more.

It feels calm, inviting, and full of stories.

Each front porch and back alley tell us a unique story with a specific charm that it's not overwhelming, even if it looks a bit hectic.

This small walks keep my mind occupied while creating curiosity of what is around me.

Being able to get out and feel more life other than the few people I see week-to-week has been one of my little escapes that has kept me going during these times of isolation.

The way that classes and culture mix makes this a very unique place.

The streets provide a sense of community and integration that is not usually felt.

Its location is only a few blocks North of South Tucson and Santa Rita Park.

And just South of downtown.

These places bring culture and history that collide around the neighborhood.

This can be seen through ornamentation, colors, textures and items found throughout.

During each walk, something new is visible even if the path is the same.

The trees around the sidewalks bring unique characters.

The birds singing each morning and afternoon, the dogs barking and the cats wandering about, each integrated peacefully between streets and cars.

Armory Park has become one of my new places of contemplation and appreciation through each breath and sound I experience.

The walks through its alleys, sidewalks and streets hold a special part within me.

They've helped me more than they'll ever know.

Armory Park neighborhood is one of my favorite places.

[Tom] Before we go, here's a sneak peek at a story we're working on These patterns start forming and it shows you what it wants you to do.

My name is Carlos Valenzuela.

I've been designing, painting, fabricating murals out of glass and tile since I was about 17 years old and never went to art school.

My artistic training came through apprenticing with the community artists.

[Tom] Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you next week.