Interview Nathalie Pham: „Life just happened, and this is where it is at.” (Part 1)

Reto Stuber interviews people, who made their way to the US. Today: Nathalie Pham, startup founder and artist.

Hi Nathalie, thanks for the interview! Please introduce yourself.

My full-name is Nathalie Thuy-Anh Pham, and I am 33 years old. I was born in Stuttgart-Vaihingen to Vietnamese parents. My parents came over from Vietnam to study at the university and then to return to Vietnam to help in the family business. The Vietnam war though shattered their hopes and family plans and my parents remained in Germany.

When I turned 16, just shortly after the unification of Germany, the hate towards foreigners flared up in Germany and in particular in my hometown, Pforzheim, with a high Russian-German immigrant population. My parents moved our family to the United States at that point. I left the Gymnasium (Theodor-Heus) and finished HighSchool in Scottsdale, AZ and studied at the University of Missouri-Columbia (what was quite a trip after living in Pforzheim and being a part of the JUSOS-Junge Sozial Demokratische Partei “Young Social Democratics” – and being very active in the local theater scene) and received my BFA with emphasis in sculpture and painting.

After graduation I moved to Boston where I worked as apprentice to very well-known sculptor of the 60′s-70′s, Dmitri Hadzi. At the same time, I started to work as production artist and Associate Web Producer for a small company in Arlington, a suburb from Boston, during the .com boom until the crash in 2001. I saw this as a great opportunity to apply for my MFA in sculpture at Parson School of Design in New York City.

After graduation, I started my own company, NPcreate Inc., in 2005 with the big bang: my first project was to develop a software application for the Winter Olympics in Torino, which worked quite well. We are currently developing the news applications www.bizwall.net and www.whiteartwall.com where small businesses and artists can and maintain their own web site within a week – without using some ugly templates that look horrifying or work with super expensive design firms. I am also currently adjunct faculty in the art department for computer graphics at New Jersey City University, NJ.

I am a practicing artist and I think both practices are very closely related: building a web site is sort of a digital sculpture. The application we are about to launch the beta version is super complex, and thinking of all the moving parts is very much like a huge sculpture or installation. One has to think and research many materials and techniques when building a major artwork. The only difference is that one applies different techniques ad methodologies.

Why did you decide to move to the US?

It was my parents’ decision and I was not thrilled about their plan to move to the Scottsdale, Arizona. I was about to leave a life in Germany and a “raging teenager” with 16. In my mind there my life was just about to begin: I had my first boyfriend, offered to play the lead in a musical the next year, and appointed to the city youth council.

In the next part, Nathalie will talk about her move to the US and her experiences.

Tags: Interview

This entry was posted on Donnerstag, August 19th, 2010 at 23:07 and is filed under Allgemein. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.