March 2 - May 19, 2007

Present Tense

From March 2 - May 19, 2007, the Chinese Culture Center, in partnership with Kearny Street Workshop, presents Present Tense, a new visual exhibition showcasing the talents of young, emerging Chinese American artists. Featuring work by Susanna Kwan, Lauren M. Wong, Niana Liu, Max Chen, Amy Ho, Lucy Kalyani Lin, Marcus Lo, Sylvia La, Erin Ng, Jocelyn Shu, Sharon E.O. Hing, Stephanie Lie, and Amy Lam, this group exhibition offers a vibrant, lush, and expansive view into the intriguing work of new voices from the San Francisco Bay Area.

From Amy Lam’s Anita Mui Yim-Fong-inspired video altar installation, Madonna of Asia, to the grafitti-influenced Bay Area visual serenades of Marcus Lo, to Lauren M. Wong’s ink-and-colored-paper commentary on The Matriarch, to Sylvia La’s quietly powerful paintings on the Asian American experience, to the uncomfortably intimate sound installation of Lucy Kalyani Lin, this show promises to intrigue and challenge its viewers, presenting a diverse portrait of young Chinese America.

Exhibition runs 3/2 – 5/19; gallery hours are Tues – Saturday, 10am – 4pm

Location: Chinese Culture Center gallery, 750 Kearny Street, 3rd floor of Hilton San Francisco Financial District Hotel, San Francisco.

Cost: free

Info: CCC: 415.986.1822 or info@c-c-c-.org; KSW: 415.503.0520 or info@kearnystreet.org

About the artists

Max Chen was born and raised in the Bay Area. Needing a change of weather, he went to college in upstate New York and came back with a degree in mechanical engineering. Since then it has been a mix of industrial/product design and metalworking. The only constant is comics and bicycles.

Sharon Elaine Ong Hing is a fifth generation Chinese American who was born and grew up in San Francisco, California. After graduating from University High School in 2001, she attended UCLA where she earned three degrees (Fine Arts B.A., International Development Studies B.A., and History B.A). In 2006, Ms. Hing moved to Hong Kong to study Cantonese at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. While in Hong Kong she also worked at the legal aid organization, Helpers for Domestic Helpers, volunteered at the Asian Human Rights Commission, and taught English at Po Leung Kuk Orphanage. She currently works at Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy as a Membership and Program Assistant and volunteers at several Bay Area community organizations as an art teacher and set designer.

Amy Ho works mainly in the mediums of video and performance.  She is particularly interested in using art to investigate individual experience and relations between action, space and time.  Amy Ho graduated with a Practice of Art degree at the University of California Berkeley.

Susanna Kwan uses ink, water, and words to tell stories. Her work stems from observations of the tension and grace that can be found in any relationship. She is a native of San Francisco.

Sylvia La explores human stories through the visual narrative tools of  figure, gesture, and cultural and personal symbols. She is a mixed  media artist and works with oils, watercolor, ink, papers, resistance,  accidents, and other material the world offers. Sylvia was  born into a Chinese family in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam during a time of tumultuous political upheaval and change. She fled Vietnam with her  parents before she was two. She remembers meeting America at the age of  six. She recalls a whirlwind of impressions in those few months  --  the millions of lights in New York City, arcades in blonde,  dusty Kansas, long distances by car across unfamiliar terrain, and the  watery San Francisco bay area, where she has been living since.

A native of Dublin, CA, Amy Lam is a graphic designer currently employed in Berkeley. Amy can be found lurking in the background of Kearny Street Workshop and Locus events posing as an artist/writer type. Visit her online at www.mobilerepublic.net.

Stephanie Lie was born in San Diego, California in 1977 and now lives in San Francisco.  She received two Bachelors degrees in Art and Computer Science at UC Berkeley.  Lie worked with sculptor Jane Rosen as a studio assistant for five years, where she assisted in the fabrication of works at the Pilchuck School of Glass in Seattle and at Public Glass in San Francisco.  Lie was an artist in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, where she worked with installation artist Judy Pfaff..  While working with Rosen, she was a teaching assistant of drawing classes at UC Berkeley.  She developed drawing workshops with Rosen based on these classes, which are now in their third year.  She is designing a book based on this teaching with Rosen and Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Rhodes.  Lie has collaborated with performing artists as a musician and as a developer of multimedia tools for live performance.

After graduating from a Swiss Hotel School, Niana Liu started to teach herself painting and photography. Discovering the passion of her life, she devoted herself to art making ever since. Mixing her Eastern roots with Western influence, she often focuses on the interplay between cultures in her artwork. In July 2006, she was invited to demonstrate painting at the San Francisco Asian Art Musuem, in conjunction with their special exhibition: A Curious Affair. In her artworks, she demonstrated the tug of war between globalization and cultural identity. For more information, please visit www.nianaliu.com.

Lucy Kalyani Lin is a digital video installation artist currently living in Oakland, CA.   She graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Fine Arts in 2005.   As another transplant from southern California, she has no plans of returning. Lucy has recently become a vegetarian after watching a video clip on foie gras.

Born and raised in the bay area. Marcus Lo loves working in a variety of mediums including pencil & ink, watercolor, charcoal, paint, pastel, mosaic, collages, oils, acrylic, and many more. Some of his influences include comic books, graffiti, hip hop art, fine art, Chinese brush painting, and photography. He also volunteers teaching art weekly at Manzanita Elementary in Oakland for SPORTS 4 KIDS. You may be able to find him at Frank Ogawa Plaza or Jack London Square on certain weekends selling and doing art. If you need any custom artwork done, feel free to contact him. He also has a lot of prints of his past works for sale. For more information, please visit www.myspace.com/sosar1

Jocelyn Shu currently lives in the Bay Area from which she is a native of. She received a B.F.A. degree in Painting/Drawing in 2005 through a joint-degree program with the University of San Francisco and the California College of the Arts. She spent a year studying at Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy. Her work is highly influenced from her experiences living abroad and her travels have included extensive portions of Europe and Taiwan.

Lauren M. Wong works primarily in drawing and digital media. She received a bachelor’s degree in Studio Art, with a concentration in Digital Media, at Scripps College- a part of the Claremont Consortium of Colleges- in Claremont, California. In the past she has worked under the direction of artists Sol LeWitt, Seyed Alavi, and Rigo and her debut exhibition/installation was at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Garage. Post-college, she continues to seek new meaning in the process of art making through collaborative projects, including the co-creation a weekly web-comic involving ponies eating cakes, and actively showing her work in San Francisco and outside the Bay Area. To see more of her work visit: www.laurenmarikowong.com.

 

About the Chinese Culture Center

The mission of the Chinese Culture Center is to foster preserve promote and influence the understanding and appreciation of Chinese and Chinese American arts and culturein the United States. This exhibition gives Chinese American artists the opportunity to network with other artists and to gain confidence in promoting their work in public. For more information please visit http://www.c-c-c.org

April 25th, 2007

IWL Night 2: Octavio Solis, Genny Lim, Prince Gomolvilas, and IWL participants

A collaboration of Kearny Street Workshop, Intersection for the Arts, and Galería de la Raza

IWL 2007 graphic design by industrialforest.com.

Join Kearny Street Workshop, Galería de la Raza, and Intersection for the Arts for the second night of the 4th annual 2007 Intergenerational Writers Lab, a literary program to explore multiple forms of creative expression and generate new work. The program features three months of workshops led by seven lead artists, and four public readings and performances.

The second public IWL 2007 event is on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007, at Intersection for the Arts, and features readings and performances from playwright and poet Octavio Solis, poet and performer Genny Lim, playwright and performer Prince Gomolvilas, and IWL 2007 participants Maile Arvin, Oscar Bermeo, Ramekon O'Arwisters, Carlo Sciammas, Jaime Omar Yassin, and Debbie Yee.

Date: Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

Time: 7pm

Location: Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia Street, @ 16th street, san francisco

Cost: $7 - 15 sliding scale.

The 2007 Intergenerational Writers Lab is supported by a grant from the Irvine Foundation.

About the artists

Prince Gomolvilas has written eight plays, which have been produced around the country and in Singapore. They include BIG HUNK O' BURNIN' LOVE, THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, BEE, and the stage adaptation of MYSTERIOUS SKIN. He is the recipient of the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild/Julie Harris Playwright Award, International Herald Tribune/SRT Playwriting Award, PEN Center USA West Literary Award for Drama, East West Players' Made in America Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement for the Asian Pacific Islander Community, and a screenwriting fellowship with The Chesterfield Writer's Film Project, a program sponsored by Paramount Pictures. He regularly tours a storytelling, song-singing, bingo playing theatrical event called JUKEBOX STORIES (with musician Brandon Patton), and he hosts the BAMBOO NATION podcast, a variety show that features riveting talk, cool music, and exclusive interviews. Visit www.princegomolvilas.com.

Genny Lim is a native San Franciscan poet, performer, playwright and educator.  Her play about Angel Island immigrants, Paper Angels aired on American Playhouse  in 1995 and the landmark anthology she co-authored, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, drew international attention on the issue of institutional racism against immigrants. Last year, Genny toured Venezuela as a participant in the Second Annual World Poetry Festival in Caracas, where world poets met with President Hugo Chavez. She has been featured on the PBS series, The United States of Poetry, KQED's Neighborhoods Series, San Francisco Chinatown, and Genny Lim: The Voice by David Moragne.

Octavio Solis is a playwright and director living in San Francisco. His works Man of the Flesh, Prospect, El Paso Blue, Santos & Santos, La Posada Mágica, El Otro, Dreamlandia, The 7 Visions of Encarnacion, Bethlehem, The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy, Gibraltar, Lethe, and Marfa Lights have been mounted at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the New York Summer Play Festival, the Dallas Theater Center, the Magic Theatre, Intersection for the Arts, South Coast Repertory Theatre, the San Diego Repertory Theatre, the San Jose Repertory Theatre, Shadowlight in San Francisco, the Venture Theatre in Philadelphia, Latino Chicago Theatre Company, Teatro Vista in Chicago, Thick Description, Artattack, Campo Santo, the Imua Theatre Company in New York, and Cornerstone Theatre. Solis has received an NEA Playwriting Fellowship, the Will Glickman Playwright Award, a production grant from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, the 1998 TCG/NEA Theatre Artists in Residence Grant, the 1998 McKnight Fellowship from the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, and the National Latino Playwriting Award for 2003. He is the recipient of the 2000-2001 National Theatre Artists Residency Grant from TCG and the Pew Charitable Trust for Gibraltar at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His new anthology, Plays By Octavio Solis is published by Broadway Play Publishing.

About the Intergenerational Writers Lab

The 4th Intergenerational Writers Lab (IWL)  2007 is a unique program with three of SF’s oldest arts organizations that challenges writers to thoroughly explore and develop writing. The IWL 2007 program takes place March 10 – July 11, 2007, and features workshops, public readings, and a chapbook publication.  IWL workshops are led by playwrights Octavio Solis and Prince Gomolvilas, essayist and critic Thy Tran, poets Genny Lim and Mahru Elahi, novelist and travel writer Linda Watanabe McFerrin, and poet & performer Uchechi Kalu.

The goals of the IWL program include the following:

1)   to provide twelve local emerging writers with the opportunity to challenge, develop, and expand their writing by working with emerging and established writers in a variety of genres;
2)   to contribute to the development of new literary forms and language that incorporate multiple forms of creative expression;
3)   to provide emerging writers with the opportunity to connect and work with each other and with established writers in the literary world;
4)   to provide the community with an opportunity to engage with new work and new explorations of form and language;
5)   to contribute to the wealth of independent literary publications by publishing a new chapbook from KSW Press, Galería de la Raza, & Intersection for the Arts that highlights work by exciting new writers committed to exploring new forms and voices.

About the Collaborating Organizations

Kearny Street Workshop is a multidisciplinary arts organization based in San Francisco's Mission District at KSW's exhibition and arts events space, space180. The mission of Kearny Street Workshop is to produce and present art that enriches and empowers Asian Pacific American communities. Our vision is to achieve a more just society by connecting Asian Pacific American(APA) artists with community members to give voice to our cultural, historical, and contemporary issues. For more information please visit www.kearnystreet.org.

Galería De La Raza is an interdisciplinary space for art, thought and activism – Galería organizes cutting-edge art exhibitions, as well as multimedia presentations, performances and spoken-word events, screenings, computer-generated murals and educational activities. The Mission of the Galeria de la Raza is to foster public awareness and appreciation of Chicano/Latino art and culture. For more information please visit www.galeriadelaraza.org

Intersection for the Arts is San Francisco's oldest alternative art space (est. 1965) and has a long history of presenting new and experimental work in the fields of literature, theater, music, dance and the visual arts, and also in nurturing and supporting the Bay Area's cultural community through service, technical support, and mentorship programs. Intersection provides a place where provocative ideas, diverse art forms, artists, and audiences can intersect one another. For more information please visit www.theintersection.org

April 29

KSW-Next presents

Sunday Comix Jam
with Hellen Jo

Join featured guest, comic book artist Hellen Jo, at our first Sunday afternoon comix jam, presented by KSW-Next. Enjoy some refreshments, network with other artists, and hone your craft in a free-form drawing session. Bring your own drawing supplies--a small amount of drawing supplies will be available to participants at a nominal fee.

What: Sunday Comix Jam
Featuring guest comic book artist Hellen Jo.

Date: Sunday, April 29th, 2007

Time: 11.30am - 2.30pm

Location: KSW's space180, 180 capp street, @ 17th street, San Francisco

Cost: $5-10 donation; supplies available for additional fees

Information: please contact Alex Yu

About Hellen Jo

Hellen Jo draws, makes comics, screenprints ugly shit, and plays cello for Scrabbel and Thundershevitz. She currently attends the Academy of Art University in San Francisco as a student of 2D Animation (Visual Development). She likes hamburgers, some comic books, and cardboard. She dislikes vegan bacon, Asiaphiles, cute shit, and emotions. She has never peed in anyone's sink. For more information, please visit helllllen.org .
KSW's emerging artists program, KSW-Next, is a space for Asian Pacific American artists ages 18 - 35 to find a community of their peers with which to network. KSW-Next members meet to organize their own programming, including the annual multidisciplinary festival "APAture" and special events.For more information, please click here.