When Ngan Gui Wang arrived in Canada at thirteen-year-old to live with his unwelcoming grandfather, he was poor, illiterate, and lonely for his family in China. In school, he faced racist taunts and saw little hope for a future until his junior high art teacher recognized his hidden talent and Ngan’s life began to blossom.
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BOOK DETAILS
ISBN: 979-8886796049
Publication date: 10/09/2024
Publisher: Luminare Press
Wayne Ngan: Island Potter is the life story of an internationally known Chinese Canadian artist.
Wayne’s charismatic personality and masterful work captured the imaginations of the thousands who visited his home on Hornby Island and watched in fascination as he worked on the wheel during workshops and demonstrations. In spite of the many awards Wayne won during his lifetime – including the Governor General’s Saidye Bronfman Award in 1983 and the British Columbia Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 – he always made time for visitors who stopped by to admire his unusual dwelling, his gardens and especially his art.
Wayne Ngan, Island Potter, is an innovative, heartfelt, and fascinating memoir/biography hybrid that details Ngan’s life through the eyes of a lifelong friend.
The book will resonate with those intrigued by the healing of childhood trauma through immersion in the creative process. In writing his story, I became fascinated with traits common to artistic genius: imagination, resiliency and perseverance to the point of obsession, all of which Wayne possessed.
In my twenties, I lived for two years on Hornby Island (1970–72), regularly spent time Wayne and his wife Anne, and was awed by their ability to make the simplest activity an art. In 2006, after deciding to write Wayne’s biography, I spent countless hours interviewing him during many visits to his island home, while on spring breaks from teaching. In 2012, I traveled to Guangzhou to see Wayne in his native land, and was able to interview his kind older brother about details of their early life. I was also thrilled to tour of their home village, where I met the wife of Wayne’s childhood friend.
From the beginning, I knew this narrative of an immigrant artist’s life would be a portrait illuminated by our lifelong friendship, rather than a traditional biography. Having had Wayne’s voice in my ear from the age of twelve onward, I found it natural to write his story from an intimate close-third-person point of view braided with my own first-person recollections.
The prologue recounts my visit to Hornby in 2006, and gives the reader a window on Wayne’s unique lifestyle and home at the north end of the island, overlooking the sea from the top of a cliff. In the first chapter, Ngan Gui Wang, age twelve, enjoys fishing with his best friend and cannonballing into the village pond, but soon learns that his elders have decided to send him to Kah-nah-dah to live with his paternal grandfather, a decision that devastates him. In spite of his many objections – Mother explains that he will have a better life in Gam Sun; he will make lots of money – he realizes he must submit, he must obey the elders.
After a devastating period in Hong Kong, which he endures alone after his older brother’s visa expires, Gui arrives in Vancouver, B. C. on a snowy March evening. That night, he meets his unwelcoming, alcoholic grandfather, a millworker who lives in a company shack on Mitchell Island, south of the city. In a state of disorientation, Gui faces confusion and racial taunts in the local elementary school. Struggling to learn English from the disadvantage of illiteracy in his first language, Gui is lonely, homesick, hopeless. Tempted by suicide, he recalls his mother’s bravery during the war and the abandonment by her husband, and decides to live.
A break comes when Wayne enters Cambie Junior High and begins taking art classes with my father, John Eustis. I am twelve and Wayne is twenty when he first visits our family home in Richmond, B.C. after his graduation from junior high (grade nine). During the summer of 1958, my father teaches him all the pottery basics. Wayne works furiously on the wheel during the afternoons and joins the family at the dinner table, where he entertains me and my two sisters with stories of his village life in China.
That fall, my father finagles Wayne into The Vancouver School of Art (VSA), despite his not having met the requirement of high school graduation. During his time at VSA, Wayne wins first prize in ceramics at the BC Craftsman Exhibit in 1962, and other awards at his graduation from VSA, in 1963. Ngan’s career is launched as he becomes a rising star in the world of Canadian ceramic art.
“Wayne Ngan, Island Potter weaves memory with interviews and research to craft an intimate portrait of a man whose art and life were inseparable.”
–Sarah Cypher
In the course of his life, Wayne faced many challenges, in his relational life as well as his life as an artist. Wayne was abandoned by his father, and abandonment by fathers became a thread in the fabric of his story. From his deep well of resiliency, which he knew sprang from his mother’s example, he found solace and healing through immersion in the flow of artistic expression. Through his many visits to China, Wayne made peace with his Chinese heritage, and learned that his true home was Hornby Island.
I hope you enjoy learning about Wayne Ngan – as you see him struggling to center the clay, collaborating with Lloyd House to build his first studio at Downes Point, reuniting with his mother and brother after a twenty-one year separation – and in many other events of his extraordinary life.