Pottery Pioneer

A retrospective of Jade Snow Wong’s work now showing

By Gerrye Wong
Special to AsianWeek

Jade Snow Wong, known by many as one of San Francisco’s living treasures, caused quite a stir in 1950s Chinatown when she would sit in a Grant Avenue storefront and spin on her pottery wheel. The Chinese community thought she was crazy to be showing off, but art lovers bought her work as fast as she could produce it.

Now, the Chinese Historical Society of America (CHSA) Museum will be running a retrospective of Wong’s ceramic and enamelware through the end of the year. Many of the exhibit’s 30 pieces were in her acclaimed 1952 one-woman show at the Art Institute of Chicago and have been packed away in storage since then, admits Wong. This is just one of many exhibits held at the CHSA Museum, which opened just last year and is located in the heart of Chinatown at 965 Clay St.

The 80-year-old Wong grew up in San Francisco in a family of six girls and three boys. In 1942, she graduated — with honors — from Oakland’s Mills College, where she majored in economics and sociology.

“Up to that time, I had had no exposure to art — Chinese or American — nor to museums as I was growing up in the Chinatown ghetto,” Wong said.

Wong approached the owner of the China Bazaar shop and asked to use his front window space to demonstrate her pottery making. Her creative process attracted much publicity and crowds. However, her own mother was not enthusiastic about her perpetually muddy hands and would not even look at her work. In Chinatown, many first-generation immigrants laughed in her face, unable to provide legitimacy to her art. In the meantime, the demand for her pottery grew in the marketplace.

At the same time, Wong discovered her writing instincts and her first book, Fifth Chinese Daughter, was published in 1950.

In that same year, Wong married a fellow Chinatown native and artist, Woodrow Ong, and they began to collaborate on their work. They moved into a studio in the vibrant artists’ community of Jackson Square in New Orleans and were soon invited to produce a show at the Art Institute of Chicago.

This exhibit traveled on to the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Kansas City Art Institute, the Portland [Ore.] Art Museum and the Joslyn Memorial Museum in Omaha, Okla. Upon completion of the circuit, the show — packed in five barrels and many cartons — was put into Wong’s basement. In the ensuing years, the packed crates moved when she did.

Wong and her husband began a travel business and stopped their wholesale pottery business. In the past decade, the unpacked pieces have stayed dormant in the artist’s home. Today, Wong still runs the travel service and continues to make enamelware in her studio on Polk Street in San Francisco.

Now, 50 years after her original exhibition, the CHSA Museum and Learning Center are presenting her life’s work in all its glory.

As she looked back on her life, Wong said, “I did not step into the window to be a ‘pioneer’ but felt it was the option which would enable me — 60 years ago — to be free of Chinese culture’s relentless subjugation of women. I would also avoid being boxed into [the] twin American obstacles of prejudice against women in the corporate world and against Chinese [people] economically, legally and socially. The window was my first step in the life journey, which has led me to where I am today.”

Jade Snow Wong: A Retrospective, curated by Irene Poon Anderson, opened July 22 and is accompanied by an elegant, fully illustrated catalogue with insightful expositions by Maxine Hong Kingston, Kathleen Hanna, Forrest L. Merrill, as well as the artist herself. On Sept. 14, Wong will be honored for her status as a Chinese American woman artist at the Chinese Historical Society of America’s annual fundraising gala dinner at the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero Center. For more information, contact the Chinese Historical Museum of America at 415-391-1188.