Part-time but full of passion

Can a public affairs official create art? Can a pursuit taken up in retirement possess an extraordinary virtuosity? Can the product of an engineer’s avocation be worthy of gallery space?

Yes, yes and yes, asserts Lawrence Man, director of LMAN Gallery on Chung King Road in Chinatown’s Gallery Row. His current exhibition highlights two whose artistic sidelines have become integral to their lives and a retiree whose diversion has become his focus.

“The art world is very snobbish, very elitist,” Man says. “The contemporary art world is especially like that.” One unfortunate result, he says, is that it tends to snub those who make art but aren’t doing so full-time or as recognized professionals.

Last year he began thinking of putting together a show of those whose practice remains a sideline but still measured up to his standards of craft and aesthetics. Man, who specializes in showing the work of Asian artists he discovers through personal connections and referrals, found a trio of such artists.

LMAN’s show, “After Hours,” combines the works of ceramist Lily Lee and photographers Yang Cheng and Jeffrey Ying.

Man thought their work would go well together, and in his two-story gallery he set up areas with shelves and arrangements of ceramics and photography to simulate what they might look in a home.

Lee helped this visual synergy by studying the work of the photographers involved. “I asked to see the photographs before I started making this series,” Lee says during a visit to the gallery. “I’ve done other things that are fairly modern, with cleaner edges.” But in the last three months, she has produced some two dozen earthenware vases and bowls, many with a rustic and textured quality “because I had these other two in mind,” she adds.

She refers to Ying’s portrait series of Tibetan natives downstairs. Upstairs, she points to a couple of Yang’s photographs that capture his specialty -- decaying lotus plants, their stems turning reddish brown, their leaves frayed.

Though the two photographers are largely self-taught, Lee has been studying ceramics at Pasadena City College for five years. However, she says, “I don’t consider myself an artist.”

She does seem to be drawn to demanding jobs. She has worked at City Hall and now runs the public affairs office for Waste Management Inc. in Los Angeles. Going to the studio and throwing pots is a welcome relief from the pressures of the 9-to-5.

“It really takes me away from everything else,” says Lee, 40. “I like the feel of clay in my hands, and creating something from a clump of dirt is a challenge.”

It also calls on a different part of her brain: Though she usually operates on logic and rationality, in the studio she relies much more on intuition and even on chance. “I like the surprises,” she says with a laugh. “Sometimes the firing just does something different from what you expect.”

A love of texture is reflected in her work. Several pieces are rough on the outside and smooth on the inside -- or vice versa, a more unusual presentation. The rich and heavy glazes range from deep greens and blues to earthen tones.

In addition to continuing her studies at Pasadena, last year she flew to Switzerland to take a workshop with porcelain specialist Phil Cornelius. “Believe me,” she concedes, “I still have a lot to learn.”

Ying, 50, an engineer and entrepreneur based in L.A., has a day job that takes him to places such as China, Tibet, Fiji and various European countries. His photography began “when I would take one or two cameras with me on my business trips and devote one or two more days just for capturing what I see,” he says via e-mail.

A set of Ying’s Tibetan shots adorns a downstairs wall -- shy children in traditional smocks, adults with weathered faces. His more formalist works, such as a cafe table highlighted by deep shadow, are upstairs.

The destitute conditions he found in Tibet so moved him that two years ago he set up a foundation to aid charitable causes in underdeveloped areas. Today, sales of his photography go to fund that.

Of the three, Yang is the veteran, in more ways than one. He’s 87 and took up photography upon retiring from the Taiwanese Navy in his 50s. He moved to California in 1998.

“My father was always a self-starter,” says Shawn Young, Yang’s daughter, who speaks for him because he is too hard of hearing to converse on the phone. “Even when he was very young, he took up charcoal drawing on his own.”

In retirement, Yang often visited the Botanical Garden in Taipei and became fascinated by the lotus pond.

“My father used to say, ‘When the flowers are blooming, people just photograph whatever’s in front of them,’ ” Young recalls. By contrast he preferred visiting the lotus pond in the cold and gray weather, when he could quietly meditate.

Looking at the rust-colored lotus leaves, some frayed on the edges, and the withered and broken stems, he was reminded of a verse by Li Ching-chao, the celebrated 11th century poetess: “Save the withered lotus to hear the sound of the rain.” This reminded him of his wife, says Young, and how beautiful and elegant she was. “And when she got older, she became beautiful in a different way. At every stage of life, there’s beauty.”

Yang would sit by the pond for hours to study the light and to look for just the right shot. Sometimes he used a fishing rod to clear away background debris.

After a few exhibitions in the ‘90s, Yang became well known in Taiwan. Three of his works were purchased by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. This is his first gallery show in the U.S.

“I included Mr. Yang in the show because he took up photography after his retirement,” Man says. “His aesthetic view is probably the most Chinese. He makes connections between poetry and landscape, dealing with sad feelings and somehow going beyond them.”

Appropriately enough, the LMAN Gallery itself is an offshoot of Man’s “real” job -- he was trained as an architect at Harvard and maintains his practice in the office.

Man moved into the Chung King Road space in 2001 and opened his gallery the following year, the first Chinese-owned gallery among the Chinatown galleries.

Since then, he says, “It’s became far more than part-time.”

*

‘After Hours’

Where: LMAN Gallery, 949 Chung King Road, L.A.

Hours: Noon-6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Ends March 26.

Info: (213) 628 3882 or www.LMANgallery.com