Hidden Valley Lake >> Months ago, Paula Slater woke in the middle of the night with tears streaming down her face.
The Hidden Valley Lake resident had a dream about General Vang Pao, a Hmong military leader in the Vietnam War who worked with the CIA and led the Hmong people to aid the allies, saving countless lives. In her dream, the general came to her, not as a young military man, but an older gentleman dressed in a business suit. He held up his right hand to his people and said, “Come with me to a free land.”
Slater had recently been commissioned to create a monument dedicated to General Vang Pao. When presented with the plans and design, which featured the general in his military uniform, Slater confessed herself uninspired. But the moment she awoke from that dream with bleary eyes, she knew exactly how she wanted to sculpt the piece. When she told her client of her vision, he cried as well.
Slater organized a meeting with 16 Hmong people and presented her plans for the monument. “It was unanimous that they wanted to do it this way,” said Slater.
The 10 foot high, bronze portrait of General Vang Pao, which was recently unveiled in Stockton, isn’t the first of it’s kind. Three others exist in Chico, Fresno and Milwaukee, WI. But these depict the general in uniform and Slater felt strongly that she wanted to sculpt him in a different light.
“He’s not just this military person,” she said. “He spent decades dedicated to the Hmong people. There was so much to tell.”
After the war, General Vang Pao came to the United States and met with President Nixon to campaign for veterans’ benefits for the Hmong people living in the U.S. He spent the rest of his life devoted to the 250,000 Hmong people living in the country, working to provide them with an education and acclimate his people to a new way of living. When he passed away in 2011, 10,000 people attended his funeral. “He’s known as the father of the Hmong people,” Slater said.
In addition to her portrait of General Vang Pao, three relief panels tell the story of his life, from his youth serving in the military to his later efforts to help his people in this country.
But the monument doesn’t only honor the general. It’s also a tribute to the Hmong people and the 35,000 who lost their lives in the Vietnam War. And when the war ended, while some Hmong people able to make it to Thailand, then to France, Canada and the U.S., hundreds of thousands of others were left behind.
To recognize these individuals in the monument, Slater crafted a fourth relief panel, which is dedicated to the Hmong people still suffering. Slater’s client also came up with the idea to place a granite wall behind the statue, inscribed with further details of their story. The wall is titled “The Cost of Freedom.”
Slater hopes the monument brings attention to an important group of people who are “unsung heroes” of the Vietnam War. “There’s always prejudice when a minority comes into the country. I think the more that we get out the story of why they are here and what they did for us and what heroes they were, the more they can be embraced,” she said. “We owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude.”
It was an honor to sculpt the monument, Slater said, even if she experienced her share of nerves when tasked with the project. “I knew that the Hmong people were really going to cherish this. There was a lot of pressure to have this be something really special.”
Fortunately, with 23 years of sculpting experience behind her, Slater was able to approach the monument with confidence. Though she was a Fine Arts major in college and she attempted to make it as a painter, there was too much competition behind the canvas. Instead she turned to sculpting.
And if her constant line of projects is any indication, Slater has quite the knack for the medium. Even in the downturn on the economy, the commissions never stopped coming. Slater only wishes she had found this career when she was 20. “I love to do sculptures. My hands miss the clay if I’ve been away from it for too long,” she said. “I’m really inspired and drawn to it. I’m lucky to have found it.”
Slater specializes in portrait work. She’s created a number of veteran and military pieces, including a national monument for the Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. She’s cast Lincoln in bronze for a Kentucky monument, a created portraits of congressmen and senators and leaders of industry.
She sculpts her pieces in clay, constructs molds with the help of her husband, hauls them to Artworks Foundry in Berkeley and has them cast in bronze. Then she works with a welder to bring all the pieces together, finally finishing with sprays and paints to give her work that bronze finish. It can take anywhere from a few months to a couple of years, depending on the size of the piece.
Since her client was still fundraising when he approached her about the General Vang Pao’s monument, the sculpture was a work in progress for about two years. Slater conferred with her clients throughout, and in the end she created a monument which she hopes the Hmong people will cherish for years to come.
“They need to feel proud and their children’s children need to know why they’re here and we need to know their history,” Slater said. “I feel really lucky to be the one chosen to help them with that.”
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
