Art from the Notes
The Smallest Parade
The Smallest Parade
The engine hums, the boy holds tight,
Two helmets gleaming in morning light.
No map, no hurry, just the open air —
A father's love is the road laid bare.
The city roars, they answer with a grin:
The smallest parade you'll ever win.
- JP
In Saigon, the motorcycle is the family car, the school bus, and the front porch all at once. I once watched a father ride with his boy asleep against his back, both of them leaning into the turn like a single animal that had decided, years ago, exactly how to move. Nobody taught them that. The road did. There is a kind of wealth that never touches a bank — it travels at forty kilometers an hour, it smells like rain on hot pavement, and it fits, impossibly, on two wheels.
Canvas print · 12 × 12, 18 × 18, 24 × 24 in · $34–$66 · Acid-free, PH-neutral, and fade-resistant canvas. The canvas comes with mounting brackets.
Thickness: 1.25″ (3.18 cm)
Fabric weight: 10.15 +/- 0.74 oz./yd.² (344 g/m² +/- 25g/m²)
Printed on textured and fade-resistant canvas (OBA-Free)
Mounting brackets included
Hand-glued solid wood stretcher bars
Office Hours of the Heart
Office Hours of the Heart
The river keeps their secrets soft and low,
String lights above with their warm glow.
He parked the bike, she took the riverside seat,
Two heartbeats finding the same quiet beat.
No words required — the water says it best:
Some love is loudest when it's at rest.
- JP
Every evening the river collects the city's unfinished sentences. Lovers come to the benches to trade them in for quiet. He parked the bike. She chose the seat. Between them, nothing needed saying that the water wasn't already saying better. I painted them because some negotiations — the important ones — happen without a single word, under lights that were hung by strangers, in a country of two.
Canvas print · 12 × 12, 18 × 18, 24 × 24 in · $34–$66 · Acid-free, PH-neutral, and fade-resistant canvas. The canvas comes with mounting brackets.
Thickness: 1.25″ (3.18 cm)
Fabric weight: 10.15 +/- 0.74 oz./yd.² (344 g/m² +/- 25g/m²)
Printed on textured and fade-resistant canvas (OBA-Free)
Mounting brackets included
Hand-glued solid wood stretcher bars
What the Water Kept
What the Water Kept
The canal recalls each cloud by name,
The frangipani plays no waiting game.
It blooms beside the field, so sweet, so white —
A rumor of the day, a sip of light.
The water keeps what the sky lets fall:
One flower's answer to it all.
- JP
This is the image where the whole series was walking toward without knowing it. A canal in the countryside, frangipani leaning over the water, the sky doing its slow arithmetic of clouds. Nothing here is in a hurry, which in Vietnam is its own kind of rebellion. I stood there a long time. The flowers didn't perform. They just were. That felt like the whole lesson.
Canvas print · 12 × 12, 18 × 18, 24 × 24 in · $34–$66 · Acid-free, PH-neutral, and fade-resistant canvas. The canvas comes with mounting brackets.
Thickness: 1.25″ (3.18 cm)
Fabric weight: 10.15 +/- 0.74 oz./yd.² (344 g/m² +/- 25g/m²)
Printed on textured and fade-resistant canvas (OBA-Free)
Mounting brackets included
Hand-glued solid wood stretcher bars
The First Economy
The First Economy
Before the coins, before the crowd,
Her baskets speak their colors loud.
She weighs the greens with practiced hands —
The oldest market in the lands.
No fuss, no flourish, just what's true:
I grew this morning, fresh for you.
- JP
She was there before the sun negotiated its position. Baskets of greens, limes like marbles, chilies with opinions. Everything she sells was alive that morning, which is more than most of us can say about our work. Watch a market lady weigh produce and you're watching the oldest honest transaction on earth: I grew this, you need this, let's not complicate it. The kitchen is the first studio. The market is the first gallery.
Canvas print · 12 × 12, 18 × 18, 24 × 24 in · $34–$66 · Acid-free, PH-neutral, and fade-resistant canvas. The canvas comes with mounting brackets.
Thickness: 1.25″ (3.18 cm)
Fabric weight: 10.15 +/- 0.74 oz./yd.² (344 g/m² +/- 25g/m²)
Printed on textured and fade-resistant canvas (OBA-Free)
Mounting brackets included
Hand-glued solid wood stretcher bars
Sun Ninjas
Sun Ninjas
Hood up, shades down, sleeves pulled long,
She rides the heat the whole day long.
The sun complains; she doesn't care —
You'll never catch her unaware.
Yellow scooter, red-hot style:
The ninjas own each sunny mile.
- JP
I call them sun ninjas — the women who ride armored against the sun in hoodies, gloves, and face coverings, fully committed to the bit. It looks like a heist. It's actually skincare. I admire the thoroughness: in a city that improvises everything, here is one ritual performed with absolute discipline. The sun brings its worst; she brings sleeves. Some battles you win by refusing to show up for them.
Canvas print · 12 × 12, 18 × 18, 24 × 24 in · $34–$66 · Acid-free, PH-neutral, and fade-resistant canvas. The canvas comes with mounting brackets.
Thickness: 1.25″ (3.18 cm)
Fabric weight: 10.15 +/- 0.74 oz./yd.² (344 g/m² +/- 25g/m²)
Printed on textured and fade-resistant canvas (OBA-Free)
Mounting brackets included
Hand-glued solid wood stretcher bars
Rush Hour, Age Eleven
Rush Hour, Age Eleven
Backpack bouncing, spokes a-spin,
He dives where the traffic's thin.
Past the shops, the red Vespa's gleam,
An eleven-year-old's racing dream.
The street won't ask how old you are —
Just hold your line, you'll go far.
- JP
Nobody in Saigon waits to grow up before joining the traffic. The boy on the bicycle threads the same river of engines as everyone else, eleven years old and already fluent. I love that about this city: it doesn't ask for your credentials. It asks for your balance. Keep moving, keep your eyes up, and the street makes room. Childhood here isn't a waiting room. It's a lane.
Canvas print · 12 × 12, 18 × 18, 24 × 24 in · $34–$66 · Acid-free, PH-neutral, and fade-resistant canvas. The canvas comes with mounting brackets.
Thickness: 1.25″ (3.18 cm)
Fabric weight: 10.15 +/- 0.74 oz./yd.² (344 g/m² +/- 25g/m²)
Printed on textured and fade-resistant canvas (OBA-Free)
Mounting brackets included
Hand-glued solid wood stretcher bars
Night Traffic
Night Traffic
The moon clocks in, the engines purr,
A thousand helmets start to stir.
The bridge holds still, the river glows —
Where everybody goes, nobody knows.
Headlights bloom like evening flowers:
The city keeps its night-shift hours.
- JP
Saigon doesn't sleep; it just changes uniforms. By day the city negotiates, by night it confesses — on a bridge, under a moon that has watched every version of this traffic since the first bicycle. Nobody here is in a hurry and everybody is: that's the paradox you learn leaning on a railing at midnight. The headlights aren't going anywhere. They're just making sure the dark remembers they passed. The day gets all the credit, but the night does all the honest work.
Canvas print · 12 × 12, 18 × 18, 24 × 24 in · $34–$66 · Acid-free, PH-neutral, and fade-resistant canvas. The canvas comes with mounting brackets.
Thickness: 1.25″ (3.18 cm)
Fabric weight: 10.15 +/- 0.74 oz./yd.² (344 g/m² +/- 25g/m²)
Printed on textured and fade-resistant canvas (OBA-Free)
Mounting brackets included
Hand-glued solid wood stretcher bars
Checkered Day
Checkered Day
Red helmet on, the morning's bright,
Her checkered jacket catches light.
The fruit stalls call, the engines roar,
She's ridden this road a thousand times before.
Backpack packed, she's on her way —
The checkered flag of the working day
- JP
She dresses like a flag and rides like she means it. The checkered jacket isn't fashion — it's a declaration: I am here, I am moving, get out of my way politely. I love the women of this city who turn the commute into couture. The fruit sellers know her. The traffic knows her. The red helmet has seniority over every engine on the road. Somewhere there's a racing circuit with champagne and trophies. She has a backpack, a water bottle, and a better record than all of them.
Canvas print · 12 × 12, 18 × 18, 24 × 24 in · $34–$66 · Acid-free, PH-neutral, and fade-resistant canvas. The canvas comes with mounting brackets.
Thickness: 1.25″ (3.18 cm)
Fabric weight: 10.15 +/- 0.74 oz./yd.² (344 g/m² +/- 25g/m²)
Printed on textured and fade-resistant canvas (OBA-Free)
Mounting brackets included
Hand-glued solid wood stretcher bars
Bridge of Youth
Bridge of Youth
He stands and watches the traffic flow,
The years behind, the years to go.
Above the leaves, a younger face —
The boy that time cannot erase.
He scans each rider passing through:
Is any of them the younger you?
- JP
He stands on the bridge the way you stand at the edge of your own life — watching the traffic the way you watch years: always moving, never stopping for you. Above him, among the leaves, the face of someone who hasn't learned to be tired yet. His younger self, maybe. Or everybody's. The riders pass and he studies each one like a question he keeps asking. The beautiful cruelty of a bridge is that it only goes one way. The beautiful mercy is that it goes at all.
Canvas print · 12 × 12, 18 × 18, 24 × 24 in · $34–$66 · Acid-free, PH-neutral, and fade-resistant canvas. The canvas comes with mounting brackets.
Thickness: 1.25″ (3.18 cm)
Fabric weight: 10.15 +/- 0.74 oz./yd.² (344 g/m² +/- 25g/m²)
Printed on textured and fade-resistant canvas (OBA-Free)
Mounting brackets included
Hand-glued solid wood stretcher bars