Proust dipped a Madeline in a cup of linden tea and was transported back to his childhood. As part of the San Francisco Art in Storefronts Projects, Cynthia Tom uses different objects, from Chinese culture, to evoke time, space and memory.
Her tea is jasmine, her cookie is the moon cake and the memories that she wants to honor are those of her Chinese family and the wider Chinese community. This is not solely the Chinatown of tacky tourist shops but the vital, bustling community where China met America and out of that meeting (sometimes friendly, sometimes not) came a unique synthesis – not Chinese, not American but both together and yet, separate.
950 Grant Avenue, the location of her installation has been a restaurant, a boarding house and a nightclub featuring Chinese performers. She’s painted the building a vibrant “lucky” orange and filled the window with items, both pedestrian and beautiful - from her own paintings of Chinese women to a bag of rice to mock-ups of the ubiquitous boxes of Chinese take-out .
Because of her project, people are connecting with memories of the history of that particular space in time as well as their own recollections of personal history. The son of one of the co-owners of the nightclub got in touch with her. On her blog, Cynthia has posted the letter, a tale of his father and Eddie Pond, a real wheeler-dealer and probably one of the models for the nightclub owner in the movie, Flower Drum Song.
Andy Young, the grandson of the original owners of the Kuo Wah restaurant recounts the history of the restaurant along with a marvelous image of the tea cups they used:
http://www.tikiroom.com/tikicentral/bb/viewtopic.php?topic=16072&forum=5&10
Opening Reception:
June 11 at 5-7 PM in Wentworth Alley, right behind 950 Grant (between Washington and Jackson
http://jpdobrin.blogspot.com/2010/06/chinatown-memories-shop.html
Read more about Cynthia and the process of creating this installation at her website and her blog:
www.cynthiatom.com
www.cynthiatom.blogspot.com
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