Wong: Yes, I was invited by the San Francisco Museum Modern Art gallery to be part of this

And when I received the invitation from the curator, she said, “If you accept this invitation, you have to be willing to sell your work.” And that was a challenge, because I do installations. I am in a lot of collections, but that’s because people are just pleased by what I make. And so I said, “Oh, ok.” And I spoke to my gallerist in New York and she said, “Could you make something small? Your works are all so big.” And so I said, “ok, what could I do that’s small that people might want to buy and take away?” And so I had an epiphany one day, it came to me at one in the morning—dolls. And that’s really interesting because as I told you, I had an impoverished childhood and I never had a doll in my life. I may have had one—I seem to recall that somebody from the Salvation Army, which was one or two blocks away from our restaurant, might have brought me a doll one day, but I have a faint recall of that. But I don’t remember dolls as part of my life. And so there I was, at the age of 70, playing with dolls.”

— Flo Oy Wong interview, Asian American Art Oral History Project at Via Sapientiae, Digital Commons@DePaul

Interviewer: Angelika Piwowarczyk
Artist: Flo Oy Wong
Phone interview Chicago, IL/ Sunnyvale, CA
Date: June 3, 2009 6:30 – 7:45pm CST