Culture A R T
Art Speaks Every Language Written by L I B B Y J O H N S O N
H
ai Soe, a 25-year-old local artist, says that as a child he was barely aware of art. “I didn’t know - I didn’t see art, I didn’t know it was important,” he recalls. His lack of exposure to art was due primarily to the fact that he spent ten years of his early life living in a refugee camp in Thailand. There, he admits, his perception of art as having “little value” was framed through a lens of living a life that was rooted in survival and necessity rather than extras. “When I was little, I liked art, but there were no
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Owensboro Living M AY / / J U N E 2 0 2 2
/ / Photos by J A M I E A L E X A N D E R
materials in the refugee camp to do art. You maybe had maybe a pencil and a sketchbook.” Around the time Hai Soe was 15, he and his family—his parents, four brothers and two sisters—left the refugee camp and moved to Austin, Texas. In Austin, Hai Soe was enrolled at Reagan High School, which had over 2000 students. He spoke no English and says it was very stressful, as he could not communicate with anyone, even the bus driver. Though he made some friends
and improved his English through playing soccer in Austin, it was when he got placed in a general art class that he began to feel at home. “It was better than the other classes, because you didn’t have to speak,” he says. He picked up sketching first and quickly moved to more challenging mediums, such as acrylic and watercolor painting. “The art teacher encouraged me, but I didn’t understand her,” he recalls. “I just kept creating.” After two years in Austin, Hai Soe and his family relocated
