Wah Chang
| Wah Chang | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 2, 1917 Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii |
| Died | December 22, 2003 (aged 86) Carmel, California, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | film, sculpture, painting |
| Notable work | Star Trek |
Wah Ming Chang (鄭華明 August 2, 1917–December 22, 2003) was a Chinese-American designer, sculptor, and artist. With the encouragement of his adopted father, James Blanding Sloan, he began exhibiting his prints and watercolors at the age of seven to highly favorable reviews. Chang worked with Sloan on several theatre productions and in the 1940s, they briefly created their own studio to produce films. He is known later in life for his sculpture and the props he designed for Star Trek (the (original series), including the tricorder and communicator.
The Chang family moved from Honolulu, Hawaii to San Francisco, California and about 1920 opened the Ho-Ho Tea Room on Sutter Street, which became a favorite venue for the city’s Bohemian artists. Wah-Ming’s mother, Fai Sue Chang, was a graduate of Berkeley’s California School of Arts and Crafts (today’s California College of the Arts), where she specialized in fashion design and etching. When she died in 1928, her husband persuaded Wah Ming Chang’s art teacher and family friends, the highly respected printmaker, puppeteer, and theatre designer, James Blanding Sloan and his wife Mildred Taylor, to become his son’s legal guardians. Sloan exhibited Wah Ming’s etchings and watercolors in public exhibitions as early as 1925 to favorable reviews in the San Francisco Bay Area and later in the largest art colony on the Pacific Coast, Carmel-by-the-Sea. The child became part of Sloan’s family, traveled in 1926 to Taos, New Mexico for the on-site study of American Indian culture, and in 1928 displayed his block prints in joint exhibitions with Sloan at the prestigious Philadelphia Print Club and in Pasadena, California. He became a valued assistant in several of Sloan’s marionette theatres as well as in productions for the Hollywood Bowl Ballet and the “Cavalcade of Texas.” In the mid-1940s Chang formed a joint studio business with Sloan, The East-West Film Company, and produced such memorable films as Pick a Bale of Cotton (an interview and performance with the legendary blues and folk singer Lead Belly in 1944) and the highly controversial anti-war short (1946–47), The Way of Peace, created in part with elaborate miniature sets and puppets in stop-motion.
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