Still In Love: Karaoke Suite is the continuation of a project that began twenty years ago, where I made six karaoke videos inspired by outreach work with Vietnamese American youth in Dorchester, Massachusetts. These former students are now adults with a new set of concerns and experiences. I felt it was time to create a new installment that would catch up on their lives. I chose karaoke as the format for this project because it is a beloved and vital entertainment in the Vietnamese American community.

So far, I’ve fully completed three karaoke videos which explore dating, parenthood, and loss. Leaning into the karaoke genre, the videos are unabashedly sentimental and pop-oriented. I plan to work on three additional karaoke videos that cover more historical and challenging themes.

The videos are experienced in a karaoke room complete with a TV (video loop), mural, coffee table, pillows, and a rug. The viewer can listen to the music by using supplied headphones and draw in coloring book versions of another project of mine: A Vietnamese American Picture Dictionary. Behind the TV is a mural of a modified image from A Vietnamese American Picture Dictionary. I chose the image of chè, a beloved Vietnamese dessert. The colorful layers of ingredients at the scale of a mural can also be appreciated as a landscape. The karaoke room installation was exhibited in my MFA thesis exhibit at Towson University (1/31/2025-3/14/2025). 

A Vietnamese American Picture Dictionary, pushes and pulls at the picture dictionary format to illuminate the Vietnamese American story. Through drawings, paintings, prints, and an artist book, I hope to embody the process of learning a language—the wonder of words, the slipperiness of meaning, and the humor in translation. As 2025 marks fifty years since the fall of Saigon, I feel an urgency to commemorate how far we’ve come. So far, I’ve conducted research and made sketches, prints, and large wall drawings. I also created a coloring book version of the picture dictionary.

Looking ahead, I will continue to draw from personal history but also examine the effects of colonialism, trauma, racism, and media representation on Vietnamese Americans. I will investigate incidents of conflict, including the Ku Klux Klan attacks against Vietnamese fisherfolk in Texas from 1979 to 1981 and the Stockton schoolyard shooting in 1989 where five southeast asian refugee children were slain. My findings will be synthesized into sketches, prints, site-specific wall drawings, and a culminating artist book.  I plan to exhibit the prints and drawings and present the artist book through readings at bookshops and institutions.

Years ago, My father drew a map of what he remembered from his childhood village. After he passed in 2019, My wife and I traveled to Vietnam in search of the places he had drawn. This is the foundation for my project, Draw Me A Map––part travelogue, part meditation on grief. Dad never returned to his homeland, but I think of this project as a way for us to go back together. A quote from filmmaker, Kirsten Johnson, guided this work  “Because we change, we have a new capacity to know the person [who has passed].”  The mural was completed January 2026. I plan to create an artist book next.

Music composed for Science Magazine videos. From 2014-2018, I was the Senior Video Producer/Editor at Science Magazine. One of the many joys of the work was composing the music for the videos I made.

Cartoons published in The New Yorker.

My jazz trio project. Superior Cling is Mike Okusami on bass, Paul Keesling on drums and I am the vocalist/pianist/bandleader.  Our group plays an eclectic mix of originals, standards, and more.