Thao Huynh French Sends Us Flowers Through Art
By Alyssa Chiang and Alexis Constantino
Photography: Gizelle Lopez @lopezgizelle_
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JUL/AUG 2023 BY LOTUS MAG
When San Diego muralist Thao Huynh French suggested we feast together at Minh Ky, one of her fave restaurants in City Heights, we couldn’t say no. Delicious Asian food + terrific company? Doesn’t get much better. Sharing food, family-style, is a way of expression for us - a way of saying “we’re family, and we’re here for each other.” She even brought her adorable nieces, Akira and Arty, along to hang out!
Thao took charge in ordering their bestselling roast duck (“They only make, like, 40 of these and they sell out every day,” says Thao), the bò lúc lắc (“It’s called ‘shaking beef’, because they shake it in a wok vigorously”), and large bowls of egg noodles. She affectionately spoons heaps of fragrant food into her nieces’ plates before her own. “Chili oil, anyone?” she asks.
“I remember when I was a kid, we tried Thanksgiving for the first time,” Thao recounts. “We ordered it from a restaurant like Boston Market and we were like, this is really bad. We ended up ordering some roast duck and fried chicken to go with the dry turkey.”
She smiles at the staff and tells us, “I’m so happy to be doing this. The family [who owns Minh Ky] is really sweet. I just got a grant from the county to do social justice work that intersects with art/film. I don’t know what it looks like yet, but I definitely want to highlight refugee stories, especially in City Heights. I think I might interview the family here.”
Thao lived in City Heights for 12 years, but moved out during the pandemic because the landlords “got super shady” and they started showing up unannounced. “It pissed us off. We started looking every day because nobody was moving at that time. But we found a deal of a lifetime and moved.”
Even after moving, Thao still eats at Minh Ky frequently. “Funny story about the mural outside. I’d been eyeballing the wall for years, and I asked Kim (the person behind the register) if I could get permission to paint a mural on the wall. And she said no. Then we got into a kind of awkward exchange, and eventually she slipped me the number for the property management while I was finishing my meal. I’m glad she did, because I called the number, got the grant and permission for the wall, and that’s how it all came together.”
“But even while I was working on it to begin with - I use this method called the ‘doodle grid’ that helps me scale up my art, so I put all these random markings on there and they were like, ‘What the $%@* is she doing?!’ and everybody would yell at me or laugh at me while walking by. Every day I would get into a tiff with someone outside, and I’d say, ‘Just wait.’ Eventually it started to come together.”
People started to give her thumbs-up, she tells us. “That’s like the ultimate parent-approval! Even my own parents, the most I get is ‘I’m proud of you.’ Being an artist especially from a Vietnamese family is highly discouraged, because they don’t think you can do it. It’s just not ‘the path’. You have to figure it out and find your own journey and art style. I still struggle with it all the time.”
Thao is used to the initial backlash when she starts a new project. “I’ve had the cops called on me. When I was painting for Long Beach Walls, I had the cops called on me three times. It was annoying.” To mitigate this when she paints for schools, she typically will use a projector so that they can see what it would like from the start, “just to calm their nerves a bit.”
She shares that she had the opportunity to paint in Vietnam, too, and the experience there was different. “There, misogyny still runs pretty deeply in society. I remember having dinner with my friend one night and we ordered a ton of food and it was just me and my friend - two girls. And everybody was staring at us. We were having beers, a lot of meat and a ton of different dishes - I just remember getting dirty looks from men, and I was like “What is going on?” Apparently, you’re not supposed to drink from the bottle. It’s considered very unladylike. You have to put it into a glass and then drink it. I got asked a lot of times from random men, even my taxi drivers, ‘How much?’”
“I got to meet my aunt for the first time when I went back. While I was in her hometown, I definitely got looks. Women there don’t have tattoos. I dress differently. My aunt kept telling me that she’ll pray for me.”
Pursuing art as an Asian woman is clearly not easy. Thao reflects, “They don’t believe in you until the end when you’re exhausted and dying.” But Thao’s resilience developed out of a tough journey. “I used to be an Operations Manager for a tech and apparel company. I started as an intern and worked my way up. I faced a lot of discrimination on the way. I remember coming back from Christmas break, and they modified my computer screensaver to this. *shows racist meme* I didn’t go to HR. I was raised not to ruffle any feathers, to be invisible. When I would complain, they would just call me sensitive or disruptive. I worked there for another eight years - I endured a lot. Towards the end, I found out my colleagues were making ~$20,000 more than me. I found out because I had a friend who was a friend with the accountant. At year seven, we had grown to such a big company that we needed to hire new people. These new people were starting out at my salary, and I was training them. Can you just imagine the rage? After that chapter in my life ended, I fell into a deep depression and hit rock bottom. I was lost and I was running out of money. So I started to paint again because it was always my passion. I reached out to a school and told them, ‘I'll give you such a good deal, you can't say no, and I'll paint you the most badass mural. All I ask is for you to refer me to ten clients.’ And then I crushed that project. I remember recovering for three weeks because I had put so much into it. It was backbreaking work - and then I never stopped being busy. I got so busy my boyfriend at the time, Kolten, quit his job and helped me. That’s why we're doing it together.
Now, they get clients, such as Disney, who come to them with a big budget. It took a lot of work to get here. “The first year and a half, it was a building year so a lot of the prices were so good you couldn’t say no. Then, we had to hike up prices for schools.” She gets so busy now, that she has had to start saying no to jobs. There’s a lot of politics with the art industry. “There’s a lot of exploitative business practices, especially from the city level. They expect you to work for free and provide a rendering before you even get paid. I am super against that, because you don’t get a guarantee of hire for the labor you put in. It’s something I’m working on educating my clients. They’re supposed to give the artist a deposit, so their time is covered in the event that you don’t like the sketch.”
Thao has had some incredible opportunities and experiences - but that’s not attributed to luck. She’s worked extremely hard to get to where she is. “This is not what luck looks like when you beat your body up to paint a mural. I'm pretty sure I'm losing like three years of my life after every mural with how much work I'm putting into it.” *laughs*
HOW THE “DOODLE GRID” WORKS
What you want to do first is draw your messy marks on the wall. Then you take a step back, take a picture of the wall, and overlay your actual design on top, making it transparent enough. I use Adobe Photoshop Mix on my phone. I just make sure it's transparent enough for me to see the markings underneath so it shows me my reference points. It's actually a graffiti technique.
SIGNATURE
It means I still have a good heart; it’s just kind of broken. What it represents is how disappointed we feel sometimes when our heart's broken or because of the next breaking news or if you are like me, who has had to fight depression forever. That’s why I paint and why I paint flowers. I paint them for me. Eventually, it became something I could also give to other people who may feel the same way I do.
FUN FACTS!
Thao loves to go to heavy metal concerts!
“I used to be a little punk/skater kid in high school.” I still listen to heavy metal all the time.
Thao and Kolten (her husband)’s meet-cute story:
“Kolten and I met at a skate shop when I was like 14. We were both dating someone else, and he said it was love at first sight for him, and it was for me, too. I’ve never felt that way. The best way I could describe it was being hit by lightning. We were friends for like seven years before going official, because we’re both really shy - I would never make the first move. He moved to San Diego, and my sister moved to San Diego. I came to visit, and someone stole my purse so I got stranded. I didn’t have a car at the time. Someone offered me a job and I just stayed. That’s why I’m still here. Kolten would pick me up every day and take me to work and drop me off at home at the end of my shifts. He was such a sweetheart and so we became besties. One day, we went and had lunch at Whole Foods. He still hates Whole Foods now, because of this. The guy who was making the sandwiches asked for my number, and I gave it to him and Kolten got pissed. It was a super awkward lunch. He was giving me the silent treatment the whole time and I remember confronting him about it. I asked, “Hey, are you mad at me?” He responded, “Well, I’m not happy with you right now.” “What did I do?” “I don’t like that you gave that guy your number.” “Why?” “Because if it’s not obvious, I like you.” It's so funny to me because he was always the one I wanted to always give my number to.
Thao also loves to cook.
“My specialty’s bún riêu. It’s a spicy tomato, crab and pork hearty soup. I try to order it all the time in restaurants but they never do that well of a job. I put a lot of heart and soul into it.
Thao’s favorite flower?
“I like peonies, dahlias…and nasturtiums, because they're edible.”
“Hi Pat!” Thao says. Turning to us, “He’s the chef. Give him a thumbs-up.” We obeyed. “We just made his day.”
Alyssa Chiang is Co-Founder of Lotus Magazine - and she’s also working on her Ph.D. in bioengineering at UC San Diego! She loves to try new foods and bathe in the SoCal sunshine. You can catch her whipping up tasty meals, dancing in heels, reading in her Cave, or listening to sad music. Perpetually juggling a bunch of things, but it’s all by choice and passion.
Alexis Constantino is one of the co-founders of Lotus Magazine where she enjoys working with the team as well as connecting with people within the community. She is also a local piano teacher in San Diego, teaching kids from elementary to high school and anyone who's willing to learn! In her free time, Alexis loves immersing herself in books, traveling to new places, and eating great food.