Inside the Studio

by Diane Daly

Artist: Serena Tang
Medium: Paint/Graphic Design
Studio Location: Private Residence, Menlo Park Neighborhood

ere’s a Tucson Art Scene moment: It is an evening puppet play of “Gruff” in the parking lot of Sixth Street Studios, and the children in the audience start to riot. Packs of four-, five- and six-year-olds rush yowling at the stage and onto the creaky wood-panel prop bridge. Only moments before, three giant billy goat puppets were calmly outwitting a bloodthirsty troll, just as they’d all rehearsed. But now the music veers to a halt, and the goats freeze, defenseless: no one can outwit children at these moments. Parents weakly threaten, and grandparents’ lips purse at the behavior of their little angels. Nonetheless, for another five minutes the children control the scene as they leap on and off the sets, yank at the goats’ ears and tails, and menace the troll like a beetle in a jar.

Serena Tang painted that Tucson Art Scene moment, because it was also a Serena Tang moment. In her paintings, children are always in control of what we see. Motifs of childhood—animals, comfort foods, birthdays, hugs—are rendered with stirring tenderness. Adults are so marginal they’re often cut off above the shoulders or hips. The fantasies of children are enacted in her work too: they ride on ripe bananas, suck maraschino cherries through the walls of glass jars, and win babies from vending machines. Snakes take away teachers, and store shelves are lined with space helmets.

Many people who meet Serena Tang after seeing her work believe she is childlike herself. She is slightly built, has big eyes and girlish syntax, and when asked about an image in her work, will reply with a simple statement and no explication, i.e. “His fingers are in the strawberry juice.” But she is an adult, and a keen one. She occasionally depicts violence, traditionally an adult theme, but does so with comforting distance, as when we see the child boxer but only after the fight, knocked out in the loving arms of a motherly coach. In a different piece, “Tender Dinner,” a child’s skewed perspective is the distance. As her mother nonchalantly cooks dinner, a wide-eyed little girl watches the sizzling meal—featuring a baby panda—reach for its mother, who is a toy on the child’s lap.

Whether or not children are on the canvas, their tendency to take things at face value is in Tang’s depictions of sexuality as well. The roles of men and women in society are stark when seen so plainly. Animals make sexual advances at aloof women; men leer and grope as well, sometimes dressed in animal costumes to try to get their girlfriends’ attention. One of Tang’s most unforgettable paintings, “Nice Teeth,” was made shortly after 9/11, “when the president was telling everyone to consume,” she says. It shows a woman standing before a US flag, her globular breasts dwarfing her titular mouthful of even teeth above them. It is the most unsettling kind of childish perspective, the kind that sees what is there rather than what you ask it to see.

“Nice teeth” is one of the few paintings of Tang’s that have clear titles, and in it language is a decoy. Like small children, she has little use for language, and often her images are wordless. This is not uncommon for painters; it is quite rare, however, for graphic designers. Tang’s website, which she designed, has almost no text, only images. Navigating the site is a whimsical experience, devoid of explanations but full of surprises.

Tang studied graphic design at the University of Arizona, but she rarely creates her work digitally. Instead she creates paintings, then scans and enhances them. Her favorite project thus far is also one of her most prominent: she co-produced a series of panels celebrating “The Joy of Flight,” displayed in Phoenix Sky Harbor airport buses. Ten of her twelve designs feature children. In one, a boy soars through the air, clouds in his mouth.

Tang grew up in Phoenix, where her parents moved after Mormon missionaries led them to the Southwest from their native China. Lotus flowers, chopsticks, and other Asian images drift through her work, and she has a tattoo of a rice cooker symbol on her chest. Clearly her work borrows from the traditions of cute characters in Asia, particularly the kawaii figures of Japanese anime. But Tang’s reliance on texture and knowingness in her characters sets her apart from the anime tradition of flatness and innocence. At the downtown library she hung a painting entitled “Picnic,” featuring an amorous fake-fur-covered bear and a bored woman, at kid-level next to a sign that said “Please Touch.” “At the end of the day there were piles of fur on the ground underneath,” she recalls with a smile, as though perhaps that contact was all the bear had wanted in the first place.

Serena Tang’s work is currently on display at Bohemia Gallery, 299 S. Park Ave., phone 882-0800, and at www.serenatang.com.