(gentle upbeat music) - In this edition of WLIW Arts Beat, a contemporary abstract artist.

- I'm using different symbols and things that I used to draw on my planner growing up, but now I'm putting them on a canvas.

- [Diane] Corn made of glass.

- If you make it big, people can't ignore it.

I'm using that as a technique to make people think about what they're looking at.

- [Diane] Teaching martial arts.

- [Darren] If you love to paint, it's part of your life.

I've made wing chun a part of mine because you love what you do, you love the art, you live and breathe it.

- It's all ahead in this edition of WLIW Arts Beat.

Funding for WLIW Arts Beat is made possible by viewers like you, thank you.

Welcome to WLIW Arts Beat.

I'm Diane Masciale.

Florida artist Emily Tan creates art across disciplines from abstract painting, to live performance, to DJ-ing, she expresses herself in a variety of ways and explores her identity, take a look.

(gentle acoustic guitar music) - Before I even knew what mental health was growing up, I used art as a therapeutic medium.

My name is Emily Tan.

I am an abstract painter, art teacher, paint performer, and I also DJ.

Growing up on Long Island, I was a child of a Slovakian woman and a Chinese and Filipino man and my mom had two children before I was born, so they were white and I was a little mixed baby and I don't know if that was an identity crisis right away, but I think it's what started the search.

I started painting and drawing and chalk on my entire driveway like on every Sunday and Saturday.

(laughing) I think now the work I've been doing is more childlike.

I was able to tap into that inner child and I'm using different symbols and things that I used to draw on my planner growing up, but now I'm putting them on a canvas so it feels like a full circle type of reclaimed power in my art.

The daisy and the mandala symbols are huge in my new work.

I recently did a mural for Cocoon, which is a yoga studio in Tampa.

- So a mandala is something that you can gaze at and it becomes a way to quiet the mind and invokes certain energy.

And this mandala specifically is a mandala for abundance in all of its most positive ways, in peace, in spiritual attainment, in wealth, all the good things, and what's essentially a yoga practice in and of itself to gaze at a mandala in meditation.

- Every summer, I teach summer art camp at the Tampa Museum of Art.

- Emily as an art instructor is super enthusiastic and warm and encouraging.

When you walk into that space, you're just hit with all of this creative, positive energy.

It's like a whirlwind there.

(laughing) If you've seen her process, you know she's not the neatest artist.

You will always find like some bit of paint somewhere around her from a project, so that's the same vibe you get in her classroom, but the students really, really respond to it.

- The other part of my art that I love doing so much now is the paint performances.

- I love that Emily approaches her art like a yoga practice and that she is devoted to it and we've been watching her work.

Her working is an art form.

It's beautiful to see.

(upbeat music) - So I go by DJ Emmy.

My boyfriend, Skyler, he DJs and he taught me, you know, the basics.

But it is interesting because music has always inspired my art and now I feel like the art is getting to influence DJ-ing so it's kind of like a energetic push and pull back and forth.

- It is really exciting to have started to work with Emily when she was an undergraduate at University of Tampa, to get to know a young artist at that age and see them grow.

It's just been really great to have almost like a front row seat to see to her growth and I'm really, really excited for what happens next with her and what more she could bring to the Tampa Bay art community.

(upbeat music) - So I think the way I bring my identity in, which I just recently started doing, but I like to call myself like the whitest Asian because growing up in New York I really didn't have any cultural background.

So my dad was raised in New York, my mom raised in Harlem, and we were just a very like basic, we're not gonna do any of the cultural, maybe Chinese New Year, but besides that, that was it.

So my grandma gave me my cultural background, the little bits of it that I'm so grateful for, and my grandma speaks Tagalog, she's from the Philippines, she's awesome, I love her.

She'd bring me to Chinatown, like we had the best times, but that was really it.

So I think my art, it's not really the Asian part, it's more of the mixture.

So like blending two worlds and being in this world as someone that I didn't really have a example of growing up, I never really saw a mixed person growing up, so I think that is my identity going through and that is what I try to convey in my art.

(jazzy music) What would I say to little Emily?

I would say, "Don't worry, you're gonna be okay.

There will be people that you can look up to and there are people that exist now.

You just have to find them."

So I think I found them, I think I am her now.

(laughing) - Discover more @EmilyTan.art.

And now the artist quote of the week.

(jazzy upbeat music) Mick Meilahn is a nationally renowned glass artist.

Born into a fourth-generation farm family, he combines his love of farming with his love of art to render ears of corn made of glass.

We travel to Wisconsin to find out more.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - I grew up on this farm, or my dad's uncle I believe had the farm at one time.

My dad grew up here and we were milking cows.

I grew up a dairy farm.

He delivered milk house to house with glass containers and that was part of my job as a little kid growing up is I'd run bottles to the house.

But dad wanted me to go to college.

The only one who went to college and I happened upon the art studio.

Of course, I took some art classes in high school, but as a fast track to a class through the art department and they were throwing pots and I thought, well, I can do that, I'm afraid to get dirty.

And that's how I ran into, they offered glass at that particular college in 1964.

When I left college, there were several opportunities out there where I could have done this or that, including teaching at the college level.

And I chose to, at that time, I chose to come back to the farm specifically because I wanted to raise my family on a farm where I had the freedom to roam, so to speak.

So I chose basically to come back to the farm and farm to make art.

(water splashing) It's what I finally really did when I focused specifically on making art from a motif that I understand, or a symbol that I understand, which is the ear of corn.

You gotta get the top oiled.

- Oiled.

- Okay, so right now.

(hose hissing) So the lay of the ladder work that I started that I'm making now, I have a piece called Primordial Shift.

(gentle upbeat music) - The exhibit behind me is called Primordial Shift.

It's an amazing blown glass installation that gives our guests a chance to delve into genetic engineering, especially around corn.

I mean, that was the original intent of the exhibit, but it's been an amazing opportunity to talk about genetic engineering, not just of crops, but of other organisms as well.

Humans have been modifying crops for thousands of years, but in the past couple of decades that's really sped up with the advent of some of the new technologies with genetic engineering so this has been an amazing opportunity to really look at what those technologies are and the type of questions that we need to be asking about both the pros and cons of technology.

- I planted my first genetically seed in 1995 and that's when I made the decision to make work strictly about agriculture and how it affects our world environment.

When I started working, it took me a while to get into making something that would represent that whole concept and so when I started making these very large pieces of corn, it's based on some of the, you make it larger for that shock reaction.

If you make it big, people can't ignore it, so by doing so, I'm using that as a technique to make people think about what they're looking at.

And a lot of the work that I do will have little small objects that make make you think, well, what is it?

Why is that there?

And there's several things that come into play with that is that that's what art is supposed to do.

This is part of a later piece called Corn Hanger Series and the whole concept here is to take us back in time to an arrowhead as hunter, representing hunter or gatherer as all of us are a part of that at one time.

We have that same DNA.

So this particular section is the kind of a mechanical part, this one and this one and that represents the industrial revolution, which is was a big jump from in history.

But the real big jump came in selective breeding is where they got really good at crossing one variety with another, all hung on a glass bar, which represents the fragility of our food systems.

If I'm a contemporary artist, I'm making work that's about our time, and our time is really, my time, is really about how do I make enough food to produce and feed the world?

I'm a part of that and so that's always on my mind.

My grandfather had a 60 acre farm, my dad had a 200 acre farm, and when I started farming and just recently retired, we were running 2,000 acres.

but 40 bushel is where it started and when I retired, we are getting upwards of 300 bushels to the acre.

(gentle acoustic guitar music) It is a very complicated situation to try to do both professions really well, but the timeframe was right because farming is seasonal and so I had this opportunity in the winter with slow months.

The funny thing is, is that so often I couldn't wait to get back into the studio.

The downside to that is I had to drop what I was doing in the spring, and by the time I got around to the next year, it was like, what was I doing then?

But the best thing about it is that I never tired of making art simply because I had a break from it.

I came back fresh and that's really how I got to the point where I am with my work.

- [Diane] To see more of the artist's work, go to Michael-Meilahn.com - Okay, turn it off.

Okay.

Yeah!

- Now here's a look at this month's Fun Fact.

(jazzy music) Based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Darren Leung is a martial artist.

Having learned his skills from his father, he's gone on to become a trainer, actor, and technical advisor.

Here's his story.

(upbeat music) - Any kind of martial arts style in China, you would call it the name of the style and then add kung fu because it's basically, you can consider it to be martial arts, so it's like wing chun kung fu.

My father learned wing chun from Yip Man, but he was brought to him by Bruce Lee.

They were both kids around the same time in Hong Kong, so they would hang out, they would fight in the streets all the time and Bruce was always looking for something fresh and something new and he came upon wing chun and he started learning from Yip Man, and then sort of showed off to my dad, beat him up, and my dad was like, okay, I gotta check this guy out so they went to Yip Man and then he started taking lessons as well.

My dad almost always had a kung fu school in the US except for the last 15 or so years.

So I always heard his fight stories growing up so I thought, yeah, you know, wing chun sounds awesome and I just, you know, I wanna learn it so I just joined classes at nights after school.

Well, it definitely looks like a smaller building when I was here, but started here when I was 12, just industrial area Virginia Beach.

I was just like one of the two, maybe three little kids that was working out.

My dad was tough on everybody just because he was a real stickler for details and how to do things right.

So I decided to keep a sign from the old office.

Thought this was pretty cool because it had a snake and the crane on there and double knives.

Let people carry those around for training.

What I love about wing chun is its efficiency because that really goes to my personality.

Something simple, something efficient, something that makes sense, it's gotta make sense.

When I was a kid I was always taught that the snake is just capable of striking directly and that was a bad thing.

Went on and found out that's actually a good thing.

You want to be able to be direct, so in wing chun we are very direct in our strikes.

The crane represents being able to do two things at one time.

In his case, he is using a wing to cover, we call it covering, some people might call it blocking, and using his beak or his talons to attack the snake.

So we do a lot of simultaneous covering defensive work with offensive attack work.

(upbeat music) ♪ One, two ♪ - When I was sort of encouraged into musical theater in high school, it was the buzz backstage and all the prep work that goes into just like two, three days of performances that really got me.

Albert Watson, who's the dance instructor at Academy, I'd known him since I was in like fifth grade, sixth grade.

You are like Darren Leung.

And then you're like, "Hey, how's it going?

Da da da."

You're like, "What do you think about auditioning for the musical?"

I was like, "No way."

And you just just kept pushing me.

You were like, "Just do it."

And I was super shy.

- You made it 'cause you're very agile.

- I couldn't dance, but I could flop around a lot and I was perfect 'cause that was the first role I had which is Scarecrow in "The Wiz."

- You could sing a little bit too.

- I could pull the note.

- You kept on singing.

- I know, but I know I miss plenty of notes.

(upbeat music) - I wanted realness.

Some of the best actors are the ones that don't know it.

- That would be the first fit that really got me for the acting side.

(dramatic music) Right out of college, was working as an engineer for a couple years.

I switched to IT.

The economy was no good, the environment was no good, so I quit, back to Virginia.

I would go down to the kung fu school and just work out here and there.

One of the students doing wing chun, he came up with this idea of (indistinct) and he said, "Hey, do you want to be involved in the movie?"

You know, I saw this buzz, all the actors doing their thing and then crew doing their thing and then when everybody's gotta go silent, it's just like everything is focused on that one point in time to get it right.

And then you could hear the film running through the camera and it's just like, "Oh, this is so cool."

Like the fact that everybody can just move together and just get that little bit down was the best.

I was hooked, dead hooked.

(upbeat music) (music drowns out actor's voices) My dad was spending tons and tons of time out in Asia.

He hooked me up with a guy named Frankie Chan who was starting up a TV series in Shanghai called (speaking in Chinese), but we just call it TaeKwonDo Kids 'cause it was about two competing TaeKwonDo schools.

And so he said, "Okay, I'll write you a role in there."

And I was like, "Wait a minute.

Like I don't know, like I just wanna do a walk-on."

So I was like one of the best fighters in one of the outfits and so I got like a pretty important role.

After we finished the TV series, I got introduced to (speaking in Chinese) who is an independent producer, making films for the Chinese market.

Over two years, we did four pictures until the call finally came.

I was like, "Okay, we're ready to start "The Grandmaster."

(dramatic music) (thunder crashing) Wong Kar-wai had specifically planned to make a movie about Grandmaster Yip Man, who was the guy who taught my father, and my father taught me, so it's sort of like a perfect timing to get involved.

You know, I'm a nobody, but my dad, he's one of the, what they call closed-door disciples for Grandmaster Yip Man.

Wong Kar-wai, being somebody who wants something authentic, he goes to my dad and he's like, "I want you to train the lead actor for this, Tony Leung."

And my dad said, "I'll teach him, but Darren can help train him."

When it came time to shoot the scenes, they would just sort of come to us for reference so that we would have our authenticity of the motions and then what Kar-wai wanted cinematically and what Yuen Woo-Ping wanted action-wise.

(upbeat music) That work on "The Grandmaster" would eventually lead to "Ip Man 3" because we have now established a working relationship with Yuen Woo-Ping.

That was gonna help out officially assistant choreographer because they still need me there to train the actors.

And then when they do the choreography, they get stuck in something, well, what do you have in mind for an action that would sort of get us out of this situation?

(upbeat music) You know, martial arts is what?

It's an art of fighting.

In a real fight, you don't know the punch is coming.

You don't know the kick is coming.

In a movie, you do know.

It's all choreographed because I know that one's coming so as soon as you come in, I grab you and twist you around, et cetera, et cetera, so it becomes a dance.

(dramatic music) (airplane engine roaring) (upbeat music) My father no longer teaches in Virginia Beach.

He's in Zhuhai in Southern China.

It's just over the border from Hong Kong and has a bunch of students still.

There's a term we use generally across Chinese kung fu it's called shifu.

But shiful is another way of calling somebody a master or a teacher, really.

Everything for our style, and actually for a lot of styles is just mouth to ear.

It's not like in the movies where there's this secret book and somebody goes to steal it, you know.

For the first time in a long time, I had the chance to actually sit down with my father and go through some techniques to sort of deconstruct things Found out a lot of things that he hadn't been teaching because of the way he teaches, not because he was holding it back, but just because he does things ad hoc and so there's no structure to it and I just been trying to structure it and so it's been a great trip so far.

(upbeat music) If you love to paint, it's part of your life.

I've made wing chun a part of mine because you love what you do, you love the art and you live and breathe it.

(upbeat music continues) - And here's a look at this week's art history.

(jazzy upbeat music) That wraps it up for this edition of WLIW Arts Beat.

We'd like to hear what you think so like us on Facebook, join the conversation on X, and visit our webpage to watch more episodes of the show.

We hope to see you next time.

I'm Diane Masciale.

Thank you for watching WLIW Arts Beat.

Funding for WLIW Arts Beat was made possible by viewers like you, thank you.

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