From gang banger to artist
Sculptor’s work on display at the Tyler Arboretum
PHILADELPHIA >> Vanny Channal’s parents escaped the brutal Communist regime that took over Cambodia in 1975, arriving in California in 1983 after a stay in a refugee camp in Thailand. Although Channal, 35, was born in the U.S., his childhood was anything but easy. His parents struggled to make a living in their adopted country, living in Long Beach, Calif., where Channal and his two siblings grew up in gang-infested neighborhoods.
Channal, now a sculptor, is displaying his steel sculptures at the Tyler Arboretum in Media through September.
In Long Beach, “there was a lot of gang violence, drug abuse, a lot of racial tension,” said Channal. “The first place we lived in was called the ‘Twilight Zone’ because of the amount of drug trafficking and abuse. I remember crack heads would try to break into the house and my dad would chase them away.” They moved to another neighborhood where in 1992, riots broke out over the outcome of the Rodney King case.
“I was in the second grade,” he said. “That’s when I learned how to distinguish between life and death because during the riots my neighbor, an older gentleman, got robbed … They shot him in front of his doorway and this was across the street from where I was playing. I saw the bloody corpse.”
They moved again to another neighborhood but the house they rented was the former headquarters Mexican gang.
“They would threaten us, a simple walk to the store, they would beat my brother up,” he said. Beer bottles were thrown at his dad, Channal Le. (Channal said his name was due to language confusion when he was born; his dad’s first of a name is his last name.)
So they moved again, to another Long Beach neighborhood. But the violent atmosphere continued and Channal said he saw a rape take place “outside my window.”
“I was in fourth grade,” he said.
His parents collected aluminum
“I always had a crazy imagination. When we were young, being poor and hearing the gun shots and the sirens all the time, I had to imagine crazy things like how would it be if I could fly?”
— Vanny Channal
cans to sell when they first came, then his dad found work as a laborer. His mother, Prom Sokha, baked Cambodian desserts and sold those to shops. Over the years, his father learned more skills in the building trade and is now a general contractor.
“When I was in middle school, we didn’t have to be a part of a gang to get the backlash from the other
races,” he said. “I was afraid of dying every day.” So at 14 one of his close friends, who was not a gang member, was killed by gang members while rollerblading.
“They went after him with a .357,” Channal said, his voice thick with emotion. “They snatched his life away.” Channal decided to join a Cambodian gang.
“Because I grew up in that type of environment, the only future I thought of for me was dying at an early age,” he said. “I was afraid of dying every day...I thought, if I was going to die, I might as well die fighting…I caused a lot of grief, a lot of destruction, in my career as a gang banger,” Channal said. “But I thought it was justified. We made it possible for the younger kids to walk to the liquor store without having a problem. We made it possible for our parents, the older generation from our community, to go to the store or go wherever, without getting robbed.”
Channal made it through high school but he was emotionally numb from seeing so much death, he said.
“I found myself at funerals not able to cry about people I cared about,” he said.
“When I was young, history was my thing,” he said. “I wanted to be a writer. Astronomy was my thing. But there was no encouragement.” Just after high school, he worked odd jobs at warehouses and general labor jobs. But his dad had taught him carpentry, tile and dry wall skills so he had some background in construction and studied carpentry at a trade school.
When he was 21, Channal met Linda, the Philadelphia woman who eventually became his wife, through a mutual friend. She was visiting her family in the Valley section of Los Angeles.
“She was my savior,” he said. “I brought her to my neighborhood. She was living with me at my parents’ house and she saw what I had to go through ... I had to drive with a gun on my lap to make sure nobody was going to get me. Going to the grocery store, I had to watch my back.”
“She said, ‘The East Coast is not like this. There is more to life than this,’” he said. He began taking trips to the East Coast and eventually, moved to Philadelphia.
Channal found a job at the Philadelphia Zoo doing grounds maintenance and carpentry. One of the welders retired and his supervisor asked him if he wanted to learn how to weld.
“One of the things my father taught was, whatever it is you’re doing, give it the best you’ve got,” he said. “That’s the only way for us being a minority, being a Cambodian in America, you’ve got to be the best.” So he learned welding, mostly from YouTube videos and practicing, he said. It took him four years to get certified.
Ideas for sculptures came to him.
“I always had a crazy imagination,” he said. “When we were young, being poor and hearing the gun shots and the sirens all the time, I had to imagine crazy things like how would it be if I could fly?”
He made a little train as a gift for his former supervisor in 2014 and thought about making sculptures.
But people “all tell me the life of an artist is difficult, is hard. ‘Who are you going to sell to?’”
“I wanted to do this since 2014 because I allowed the rest of the world to break me down,” he said. But “trying to be the best employee at the zoo…I became the primary welder… I learned to take on things that challenged me.” When the lead carpenter retired he applied and became lead carpenter, as well as a welder.
In 2014, Channal started creating a stork from steel scrap at the zoo. He set it aside but finished it in 2017.
“They loved it,” he said. “I offered it to them … It was my way of giving them back for giving them so much.” The zoo had a Global Conservation Gala and displayed his steel stork, which is still at the zoo, for the gala. Barbara McGrath, creative director at the zoo, strongly encouraged Channal to continue making art.
Since then he’s made four statues while continuing to work at the zoo: “Steel Mantis”-a praying mantis, “American Steel Eagle,” and “Buck of Steel,” a stag. He also created a Cambodian leopard lacewing butterfly titled “Metamorphosis” that is on display at the Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion.
Last year Channal displayed his art work at the Morris Arboretum. He reached out to other artists in Philadelphia and met Billy Blaise Dufalo, co-founder and director of Recycled Artists in Residency (RAIR) and through Dufalo met John Cambridge, the Insectarium CEO. Channal helped Cambridge with a sculpture and recycling contest for schools and Cambridge allowed him to work in a garage at the museum as “the artist in residence.” Channal is just beginning to design a statue of a wild ox, a Kou Prey, which is the national animal of Cambodia and was sketching the ox in chalk on the garage floor. He is planning to make a series sculptures of mythological creatures next.
“At the same time I’m learning about art, I’m also learning about my culture,” he said. Channal has recently been giving motivational speeches to the Cambodian community here and plans to return to California to speak later this summer.
The Channals, who live in Philadelphia, are the parents of two daughters, Vanna, 6, and Davy, 4. On his arms, Channal displays tattoos of poems he’s written in devotion to his wife and his parents.