Every year, International Women’s Day falls on my mother’s birthday.
Last November I asked this community for help with some immigration advice. The family member I was seeking help for was my mother. I wasn’t comfortable sharing that until I felt it was safe to do so. She no longer has a green card, could not renew her license without one, had no proof of her expired visa and misplaced her birth certificate. She was in danger going into 2025.
I’ll go into more detail at a later time but I wanted to say thank you for any advice that you sent my way. We got the news last week that her worker’s permit application was APPROVED (it was the only path forward, and it was our second time applying) and then 2 days later her card came in the mail. I was shocked that it was even granted. We’ve been holding our breath and now my family and I can rest just a little bit easier. I share this, elated for my family, but grieving for all the families who have met a different fate.
The person in this mural is my mom, this piece named “Fresh” to reclaim the term “fresh off the boat” that I heard growing up. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a woman right now in this world. Thinking a lot about the women in my life, my mother, my sisters, my nieces. What we sacrifice, or will sacrifice. For me, this mural was a way for my mother to take up space in this world. Happy Birthday mẹ 🥭
Festival fruits and flora for Friday. I miss this mural all the time! 🥭 🍒 🍊
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#thusisterstudio #thumyphan #okc #oklahomacity #okcartist #oklahomacityartist #asianartist #vietnameseartist #illustrator #illustration #editorialillustration #editorialillustrator #oklahomamuralist #okcmuralist #muralist
“Roots” for @edibleokc . 🌱
Seeds are unstoppable. I recently heard a speaker say this over and over at the Thunder Women In Business Summit. I’ve been seeing that sentiment everywhere, planting seeds, nurturing and building, locking in. We’re all seeds in our community, taking root. We’re not going anywhere.
A big thank you to Hannah and Stuart for having me! You can find copies of this issue around OKC, I grabbed mines from Homeland!🌷
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#thusisterstudio #thumyphan #okc #oklahomacity #okcartist #oklahomacityartist #asianartist #vietnameseartist #illustrator #illustration #editorialillustration #editorialillustrator
AANHPI month for @peoplenerds_dscout 🎨
This piece was the first from 2024 where I really leaned into an outline heavy style and loved it. Maybe you’ve noticed the shift lately. I had delivered pieces in a similar style before, but I was always conflicted about stepping outside of my go to drawing methods or even changing it completely, my biggest fear being that too many differences in my folio might make me seem like I’m all over the place. I read that somewhere once, and I’ve been overthinking it since.
I wanted to say thank you to AD Jarred who said he loved this stylistic direction. That validation allowed me to own this method of drawing, it feels fresh and new for me and has really helped me dish out some of my best work lately. I stopped overthinking and just leaned into it.
Don’t be afraid to explore new styles, friends! I hope you are able to surround yourself with folks who encourage you, who can push you towards growth, who believe in how great you can be 🌱🌸
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#thusisterstudio #thumyphan #okc #oklahomacity #okcartist #oklahomacityartist #asianartist #vietnameseartist #illustrator #illustration #editorialillustration #editorialillustrator
The final garden! I put my entire heart into this piece, gluing and cutting all the plants, sanding and painting the pipes, cutting out foam for the pipe slots, gluing clay pellets, building the fruits, mushrooms, and orange branch, making little mini fruit for the mushrooms, building and wrapping the fruit base, adding moss details to the pipes, I even cut up green paper to insert into the pipes so you could get a glimpse of mossy growth. No detail was too small. I hope you get a chance to visit and I hope you love it as much as I do. I have big gratitude for my family and friends who helped me bring this to finish.
While this project was created to fit in the abandoned spaceship theme, I was and am always inspired by my parents garden in my childhood home. This installation is a love letter to their act of love, planting, growing, and feeding us. This project was extra special to me because it’s the beginning of what I’d like (hope) to keep doing in the future. I hope to have room in the budget for a proper studio! I have big dreams for these fruits and big dreams for installation work. One of them is to rent the milk bottle building in the Asian District and create/curate two immersive experiences every year, it’s the perfect little space. As a kid, we used to spend Sundays buying bánh mì when the building was a Ba Le and then we’d go right next door to Cao Nguyen before it moved. Although I didn’t live there, the Asian District is my community, and I have big dreams for us. I hope one of these days those dreams will come to fruition 🍒🥭🍊
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#thusisterstudio #thumyphan #okc #oklahomacity #okcartist #oklahomacityartist #asianartist #vietnameseartist #illustrator #illustration #editorialillustration #editorialillustrator #oklahomamuralist #okcmuralist #muralist #experiencedesign #immersiveexperience #installationart
Which fruit/veggie is your favorite?
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how I made the fruit sculptures, so let’s talk about it! Unfortunately, I didn’t take video from start to finish for the sculptures so the reel is missing steps here and there 😭I’m hoping to keep making them, so I’ll have to put it on my list to fully document the process from beginning to end! I researched so many methods and watched so many tutorials both before and during the creation of the fruit, so the process for the first couple of fruits are all different. With every step, I let the objects dry a couple days to make sure there wouldn’t be any mold growth. Let’s break down the steps!
1: I built the starting shapes out of a bunch of random things. Packing foam, cardboard, plastic bags, old magazines, printer paper, steel mesh, aluminum foil, hot glue, and A LOT of masking tape to hold the shape together. If you think you have enough tape, I encourage you to buy more 😂I had some tiny foam balls, used those and balls of aluminum foil skewered together with floral wire for the grapes. Since most of the fruits were organic in shape, I just started with a ball, and added stuff as I went and taped it all down. If I could go back in time, I would cut the shapes out of foam with a hot wire foam cutter. In the future, I will most likely do foam and then jump straight to step 3 for large sculptures.
2. Step 2 was paper mache over the taped object. I was super nervous that joint compound wouldn’t stick to masking tape, so I was paper macheing a lot of the beginning fruits with kraft paper before adding spackle/joint compound. I used Aleene’s All Purpose Tacky Glue with water instead of a paper mache paste with flour. I had read a couple of stories about flour paper mache sculptures being eaten by mice, wanted to avoid that. For the little orange branch, I paper mached foam balls and tree branch shape with crepe paper.
3. Spread on joint compound. Step 3 eventually became my step 2 after testing joint compound on the tape and feeling confident that it would stick.
Continued in the comments!
BTS from my project with @itinerantimmersive , “The Hydroponic Garden.” I’ve curated little mini experiences before at an old company for fun, but this installation is the first to make it official: I’m an experience designer!
I’ll be sharing more this week, in the meantime swipe for process goodness 🍒
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#thusisterstudio #thumyphan #okc #oklahomacity #okcartist #oklahomacityartist #asianartist #vietnameseartist #illustrator #illustration #editorialillustration #editorialillustrator #oklahomamuralist #okcmuralist #muralist #experiencedesign #immersiveexperience #installation
