Artist Chosen for a Monumental Task

Tuan Nguyen has never been a soldier, but he has seen the horrors of war.

As a 13-year-old living in Saigon, he saw the city fall to the Communist regime.

And during an attempt to flee Vietnam several years later, he watched in terror as soldiers fired on his boat, killing the people next to him.

“There was bullets and blood flying everywhere, people screaming,” he recalls.

“I had never seen anything like that. It changed my life completely.”

Today, about 10 years after he finally left Vietnam, Nguyen channels those experiences and feelings into his life’s work--sculpture.

“All of it goes into my art,” he said. “All of that made me what I am today. I went through it and, thank God, came out alive.”

Last week, a committee decided that Nguyen, of Garden Grove, was the top choice for a unique project: to design and sculpt a statue commemorating the partnership between American and Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War.

The 15-foot-tall bronze monument will stand in the city’s Little Saigon area.

City leaders are planning a fund-raising campaign to raise the estimated $150,000 needed to build the statue.

The design has not been finalized, Nguyen said, but it will be two 10-foot-tall figures, a Vietnamese soldier and an American soldier, in a gesture of friendship and cooperation.

“I want it to show [people] looking forward to the future and helping each other,” Nguyen said.

“But not on the battlefield. I don’t want to do that. It’s more about healing.”

Westminster Mayor Frank Fry Jr. said he came up with the idea for the Veterans Memorial Statue earlier this year for exactly that reason.

“America was split during the Vietnam War and is still split,” he said.

“And the Vietnamese community is also [divided] in many ways. I thought maybe something like this could help bring people together.”

Fry put together a selection committee, consisting of local artists, a retired U.S. major general and a retired Vietnamese lieutenant general.

In Nguyen, 35, they chose an artist whose ability to capture the human form and nuances of emotion have earned him awards and kept him busy with public and private commissions.

One notable commission in 1997 was a bust of Nicole Brown Simpson, which stands in the Dana Point home of the charitable foundation that bears her name.

Nguyen said the Westminster sculpture will reflect his feelings about healing the wounds of war.

“It’s not about winning or losing,” he said.

“It’s about coming together in peace.”

For more information on the project or to donate to the Veterans Memorial Sculpture fund: (714) 898-3311, Ext. 562.