A British woman has finally found a happy place to live with her family. The place is Hoi An in central Vietnam and the woman is Janie Lawson.

Janie Lawson and her sculpted angels displayed at Anantara Hoi An Resort's Art Space Restaurant 

On weekdays, visitors to Art Space, a restaurant of Anantara Hoi An Resort, may catch a glimpse of a middle-age woman who sits in a corner. Her name is Janie Lawson.

Lawson, 49, is displaying two sculptures which she named “Hurricane of Angels” at Art Space. Currently living with her husband and their two young daughters in Hoi An, Lawson says this is her first exhibition in Vietnam after her departure from Britain one year ago.

For her works of angels, Lawson made use of wire, crystals and a pair of pliers. “I was inspired by an experience which forced me to feel that I was in the eye of the storm, and the world was then filled with madness around me as I held my nerve in the midst of it all,” she says. “I called this Hurricane Angel One.” The second angel hurricane is the physical representation of the reminiscence after the first hurricane had passed.

“As a kid, I would be in a chair in the front of my family home—my legs and hips in plaster casts, my friends playing the street close by while was happily drawing,” Lawson says in reply to the question about her destiny with artworks of angels. “A smile on my face, my friends running back from their games to check on my latest picture!”

When she grew up, she once watched others walk or run and imagined being able to move without pain. At the time, she wished she had had wings. Lawson began to make winged creatures—her kind of angels and a sort of hope that one day she would fly—in her own way.

At 27, after many hip and leg operations and on graduating from St. Martins School of Art, Lawson had her first total hip replacement and bone graft. “The X-ray was shocking,” she says. “My own hip devastated the new one strangely sculptural. I had become part sculpture and was grateful for the cooperative skills involved in keeping me on my feet.”

Recovering from the operation, Lawson made more angels.  Sitting and sculpting with wire, crystals and a pair of pliers are what Lawson is doing day after day. “I would be mindful to think positively as I made them,” she says. “I sculpted those tiny angels into bigger sculptures made up of multiple angels.”

One day, some friends visited Lawson and encouraged her to sell the sculpted angels for earning a living. “It was my surprise,” she says. “People wanted to buy them. It seemed people really loved them and they were sold in London, Tokyo and Europe.”

One of the most interesting stories related to Lawson’s angels is the one about displaying her first small angel mobile sculptures in The Ritz Hotel in Britain’s capital several years ago. “Yo-Yo Ma [a Chinese-American cellist] saw them, bought every one of them and asked for more,” says Lawson. “He wanted to hang them in his music room to inspire him while he composed. Sometimes, I listen to Yo Yo Ma while making my angels, that symmetry makes me smile.”

Happy ending after hurricane

But not everything in Lawson’s life was as nice and easy as her angels. Some six years ago, Lawson and her husband were mired in a lawsuit. “It was like a hurricane to our life,” she says. “We could not afford injustice that my husband suffered. We were very upset. My husband was ill. We realized that London was difficult for living.”

Her eyes being watery, Lawson says she used to bear the awful pain after operations. She wanted to have a happier life and did not want to suffer from a pain anymore. They therefore moved to escape the hurricane, traveling around the world to find another place to live. They have settled in Hoi An since a year ago.

“We chose to stay in a place near An Bang beach that is peaceful and beautiful,” Lawson says. During the first three months, they have some difficulty with culture, traffic and communication with local people. However, things have improved quickly. Now they have understood how it works in Hoi An.

Her husband just started a business by selling healthy food. More importantly, Lawson herself now can make her dream come true: making larger artworks. “The door opens to me in Hoi An,” she says. “I made a crown of angels for a writer to wear while she’s writing. She wore the crown to a gallery, which is how Bridget March first came to see my work and encouraged me to do more.” And now, Lawson’s works are being exhibited at Anantara. Lawson named her sculptures “Hurricane of Angels.”

According to Lawson, the two collections of her works comprise 99 different sized angels. They are whispering creatures all clapping their wings together, built to an all encompassing crazy, noisy, intense dream that threatens the current world. “And the hurricane brought us to Vietnam,” she says. Lawson is planning to exhibit the works in Hanoi and HCMC.

“My angels are part of me and part of all the people I have ever met,” Lawson says. “There are parts of many people in my works. Their hopes and wishes, dream and heartaches because I believe that when you work on a sculpture, part of you goes with it.”

“Take a seat under the angels, take your time,” she insists. “You will see beauty in the small things.”

SGT