April 30, 2025 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, and for Van Le and her uncle, Allen Luong, it’s the perfect time to acknowledge an important moment for Oregon’s Vietnamese community, while also looking forward to a brighter future.

Through their nonprofit Vietnamese Arts Alliance, Le and Luong are coordinating a series of three community events to honor the accomplishments of Oregon’s Vietnamese community, and highlight the works of Le’s artist father, Le Quang Vinh.

“We want to bring the history and roots to give the future generation an identity that I don’t want them to lose. Because when we lose our identity, we don’t know who we are anymore,” Luong said.

The first event will be at the Oswego Heritage House on April 5, where Le will display some of her father’s large-scale paintings.

“We’re going to debut some works that my dad painted from 1975 to about 1980,” Le said.

Born and raised in Oregon, Le vividly recalled seeing her father, who passed away while she attended the University of Washington, working on beautifully intricate oil paintings on large canvases in their garage late into the evening.

“And my mom would tell me, ‘Go get your dad’ and ‘His dinner is ready.’ And I’d go into the garage where he was painting and be like, ‘Dad, it is time to eat.’ And mom’s then cooking and he’s like, ‘I’ll be there in a moment.’ And he had this big magnifying glass and this tiny, tiny paintbrush,” she said.

Le’s father trained as a painter and graduated from the University of Hue before 1970. In 1975, he left Vietnam and settled in Oregon, where he spent many years working as a janitor. Le said that for him, leaving his war-torn home and coming to a completely new country was like essentially stepping onto another planet.

“And not only that, but he came in his late thirties. So it was really hard for him to pick up the language and he felt like the only way he can communicate is through these paintings,” she said.

However, both Le and Luong said her father never lost his passion for painting.

“He only sold two paintings in his entire life. Two paintings were sold to my mother’s employer at the time. And with that money, he married my mom,” Le said.

Her father’s paintings depict a wide variety of subjects, including Vietnamese folklore and wartime Vietnam.

“The paintings are not the most cheerful subjects, and that’s because this was his mode of communication. He was processing what had happened to him,” she said.

Le hopes the paintings will inspire others to learn about the history of Vietnamese people, and the importance that art plays in a community.

“Art and culture reminds you of your humanity. And I think in light of these days, it’s very important to be an artist. I hope that we can inspire and continue to foster that,” she said.

The second event will be a one-night discussion at the Oregon Historical Society on April 30, where eyeglass designer Paul Vu, Oregon state representative Thuy Tran, and Le herself will come together and share their personal journeys as Vietnamese Oregonians.

“Vietnamese is the third most widely spoken Asian language in Oregon. So that makes me very proud considering that there’s larger places like California and Washington and many other states,” Luong said.

The final event, set for May 17, will be an art exhibit at Le and Luong’s plant shop, Jeffrey Allen Gallery in Tigard, where they will showcase more of her father’s artwork, and a temple within the gallery that has its roots in Vietnam.

“We hold a special temple that is indigenous to Vietnam. And so we would like to have the exhibit here because it shows not only roots, but it shows the current art that we have,” Luong said.

Le said that her father’s paintings at Jeffrey Allen focus less on the war in Vietnam and more on legends and culture.

“The paintings that we picked, a lot of them were painted after he visited Vietnam in 1995 as a tourist for the first time coming back to his country after leaving in 1975. And his entire perspective had changed the paintings that came out of that era,” Le said.

In order to continue promoting Vietnamese art and culture in Oregon, Luong formed the nonprofit Vietnamese Cultural Arts Alliance.

“It’s very easy to see where we are different. We set up this foundation to help bring different communities together, to bring different generations together and to give the new generation a look into their past to be able to say, that’s where I came from,” he said.

Born in Vietnam, Luong came to the U.S. in 1975 with his family at a young age and remembers having to settle in a new country and starting over. 50 years later, he’s committed to ensuring that the past isn’t forgotten and educating the public on Vietnam’s rich and cultured history.

“We’ve only talked about the sad things about Vietnam, but we haven’t talked about the inspirational, the richness of Vietnam. And today Vietnam is so popular around the world,” he said.

As for Le, she hopes the exhibit will inspire Oregon’s Vietnamese American community to come together and celebrate its unique identity.

“I think one of my biggest hopes, not just within the Vietnamese American community, but for everybody, is to inspire this philosophy of when you lose, I lose. When you win, I win,” she said.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/04/04/art-exhibit-commemorate-50-fifty-years-vietnamese-culture-oregon-jeffrey-allen-van-le-quang-vinh/