Fly the // Art Flag

Had a meeting with one of the nicest and most visionary artists I know (also my birthday twin), and he told me that I “inspire” him and am the “voice of kindness,” one that “deserves to be loud.” Being kind is underrated, so my soul is blushing. (Get excited for an ambitious project by Nathan “Bam” Stanton—who participated in my interactive exhibition I CAN DO THAT—in 2017!)

Vote! (What I did after the above.)

(And before said meeting, my new favorite author, Ken Liu—everyone go read The Paper Menagerie short story collection [and cry in public] please—replied to me on Twitter. Yesterday was a good day.)

Hope you had a happy Halloween! (Mine included your weekly dose of silliness. And here’s something that came out over Halloweekend that all artists / art history buffs / art lovers should check out: The music video for Jane Zhang’s “Dust My Shoulders Off.” Those visuals!) Now that another month has begun, I have a new post on Time Out Chicago: 9 art gallery exhibitions to see in November.

And if you haven’t watched it yet, a video that includes my two-minute presentation at 20x2Chi is in the previous post.

I love you, Chicago.*

*[Edit: And an update…]

Upstart

I just got invited by the one and only Paul Klein to speak on an artist panel at the stARTup Art Fair! Thank you so much! Everyone, save the date for Sunday early afternoon, September 25, at Chicago’s MileNorth Hotel. [Update: The discussion will be at 1pm in Room 404.]

Speaking of art fairs, I’m back from a brief trip to New York (photos on Instagram) and have a new post on Time Out Chicago: 9 art gallery exhibitions to see in September, including Expo Chicago, which I always look forward to.

Also:

Here’s to introverts!

Thank you for all the birthday wishes a couple weeks ago!

And be sure to read the previous post featuring a lovely artist studio visit with represented painter Sheila Arora!

Poetry in Motion

Here they are! Your interpretations and meanings (and even poems!) you wrote on Post-it notes at LEXICON, as well as all the artists’ original statements, which, as you know, were not revealed during the interactive exhibition’s entire run. Some of the statements were created specifically for the show and have never been seen before until now. Take a look; it’s the perfect source for Monday motivation!

Guess who. (Left by graffiti artist Solo RM.)

In other news: I’ve been verified on Twitter! Thank you!

And here’s:

• A status that seemed to resonate. Ah, microaggressions.

• A doodle (and caption) encompassing my latest obsessions.

Happy August / Leo season! (Adrienne Glover, one of my LEXICON artists, to me: “You’re the most low-key Leo ever. What’s your rising sign?”)

Lyrics

LEXICON continues! A couple of the interactive show’s artists will be doing talks and demos this coming Wednesday, July 6, 6pm. Create and take home your own etchings, as taught by Lisa Goesling, and watch Angie Redmond (whose works are in the first photo in the previous post) do a live painting!

Lisa Goesling, Spontaneous Combustion, clay & India ink scratchboard.

Admission is free, and all you need to bring is an x-acto knife for Lisa’s workshop. Invite yourself to the Facebook event page.

Also, LEXICON’s been featured in 18 pages of the July/August issue of ACS Magazine! Thank you, Renee LaVerne Rose!

And! I have a new post on Time Out Chicago: 8 art gallery exhibitions to see this month.

Happy 4^th of July weekend!

[Update! Zachary J. Williams, who did this powerful painting, will be answering a few questions at the artist talk as well!]

Glazed

LEXICON’s one of Time Out Chicago’s top 10 gallery exhibitions to see this month [because I wrote the post, muahaha]. The interactive art show opens in two weeks!

Happy National Donut Day (the Stan’s Donuts and Coffee staff cracked up when they noticed my Inigo Montoya / Simpsons mashup t-shirt) and have a great weekend!

Strength

Happy Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, everyone! To kick it off, here’s LEXICON artwork sneak peek #4:

Aisha Yousaf, Love & Oil, pen and ink.

More to get this glorious month started: A thought I had on naming, from the previous post.

Fellow AAPIs, tell your story!

And one of my favorite projects I came across this past year that’s always worth revisiting: “Chinatown Pretty,” a celebration of the street style of [adorable!] seniors living in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

(Also, I have a new post on Time Out Chicago today: 9 art gallery exhibitions to see in May.)

11 Chicago art gallery exhibitions to see in March

I have a new post on Time Out Chicago: 11 art shows to see this month. Happy March!

Street artist Solo RM surprised me with this drawing he made of me.

Other happy miscellany:

• Ancient China’s Terracotta Warriors arrive at the Field Museum tomorrow.

• Ava DuVernay favorited my tweet of my old sketch of Lupita Nyong’o.

• And, in case you missed it, the great news in the previous post.

11 Chicago art gallery exhibitions to see in February

I’m back from my travels! (First thing my parents and I do upon returning from our trip to Southeast Asia? Go to our local Japanese joint where most of the waitstaff is Thai Chinese and bond with them over all the places we visited in Bangkok. That diaspora.) I have some photos up on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and 500px and will [probably] add more.

On a canoe in a canal at Damnoen Saduak floating market, Thailand.

And I’ve somehow skipped (or soldiered through? stubbornly ignored?) the jetlag and compiled a list of local art shows for you to see this month, here on Time Out Chicago.

10 Chicago art gallery exhibitions to check out in January

Happy New Year! Make a resolution to see more art; here’s my monthly highlight post on Time Out Chicago to help you kick start 2016.

Hope everyone had a happy holiday season! (This was my Christmas, and this was my New Year’s Eve. The geekery is strong with this one.) When I was little, I made “pet rocks.” (If I noticed a uniquely shaped rock, I’d clean it, then paint it into whatever animal it reminded me of.) I came to my parents’ house to see that they’d dug this guy out.

Every few months or so, I CAN DO THAT blows up (it probably gets shared somewhere). And it’s happening now. Love it! (Look forward to my next exhibition in June.)

And a PSA: Artists, beware of frauds / imposters / overall horrible people / etc. Thanks to June Keser for alerting me in this post’s comments to someone who went by “Hop Coplin” on Facebook stealing this doodle of mine and claiming it as her own, even changing my signature to hers. The charlatan deleted her post after I told her off, and it now seems like her entire account has been deleted. Success.

To art thieves out there: We artists don’t know who you are. We don’t know what you want. If you are looking for attention, we can tell you I don’t have an attention span. But what we do have is a very particular set of skills, skills we have acquired over very prolific careers. Skills that make us nightmares for people like you. If you give us credit for our art now, that’ll be the end of it. We will not look for you. We will not pursue you. But if you don’t, we will look for you, we will find you, and we will obliterate your web presence.

To everyone else: Cheers to a splendid year!

11 Chicago art gallery exhibitions to check out in December

Happy December! Here’s my Time Out Chicago list of art shows to see this month.

Last week I performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and it was great fun. The MCA blog has collected a roundup of highlights (thanks for including my tweet as one of them!) here.

And for those who celebrated, hope your Thanksgiving weekend gave you much to be thankful for! Mine consisted of affairs like my 10-year high school reunion, The Good Dinosaur (this is a PSA for everyone to go see the film, which is helmed by Pixar’s first Asian American director), and said director liking my tweets. Clearly, life’s simple joys.

9 Chicago art gallery exhibitions to check out in November

I have a new post on Time Out Chicago today: 9 art shows to see next month.

Fall in [love with] Chicago.

As suggested in an earlier post, another autumn event you can continue to attend is the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. My photos from the festivities so far can be viewed on—deep breath—Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, 500px, and Pinterest (and, uh, spoilers at a few of those for the latest episode of The Walking Dead). Besides solarise, which I still can’t stop talking about, I’d recommend starting with the exhibitions throughout the Chicago Cultural Center.

Happy Halloweekend!

10 Chicago art gallery exhibitions to check out in October

Happy October! The Chicago Architecture Biennial launches on Saturday, the first Chicago Museum Week starts today, and it’s Chicago Artists Month. To help you sort through it all, I’ve highlighted 10 art gallery events on Time Out Chicago. (Included is Meet Your Maker, a networking event for which I’ve been invited to be on the leadership committee.)

Luftwerk, solarise: a sea of all colors.
Garfield Park Conservatory.

As a follow-up to the previous post: The autumnal equinox opening of Luftwerk’s solarise at the Garfield Park Conservatory (pictured above) was one of my picks for last month, but—fortunately—the show runs through January 3, concurrent with the Biennial. See it!

Lastly: I made a rule for myself that I wouldn’t show the hundreds upon hundreds of postcards I’ve been getting over the years for Dreams of a City until I felt like I was completely finished with the project, but this one, which I retrieved from my P.O. box a couple days ago, was so stirring that I had to share.

12 Chicago art gallery exhibitions to check out in September

This has nothing to do with the rest of the post, to be honest.

My Time Out Chicago September art pick post is live: 12 shows to see next month. (Not including Expo Chicago, which I’ll be previewing.)

Because of a comment I left on a video that popped up on my Facebook feed, I CAN DO THAT—along with the photo album of its opening—is getting a spike in traffic. (What I can’t do? Believe that crazy beautiful show was 3 years ago. Oh yeah and whistle.) As announced in the previous post, you can look forward to my next big independent curatorial project in June.

And I’ll leave you with this statement.

9 Chicago art gallery exhibitions to check out in August

I have a new post on Time Out Chicago today: 9 art shows to check out next month.

(Also, thanks to TOC, I’m going to Lollapalooza for free so I guess I’ll be seeing Sir Paul McCartney tonight. [My childhood self—this nerd who was such a music snob she refused to listen to anything but classical music and classic rock and would play the White Album on loop—is freaking out.])

Happy [early] August [a.k.a. my birth month and therefore the best month, to be honest]!

11 Chicago art gallery exhibitions to check out in July

Here’s my Time Out Chicago post of art shows to see this month.

Other Chicago stuff:

• The Chicago Artists Group Portrait (mentioned in the previous post) was incredible. (I sat behind two dogs. Perfection.) Thanks to Jason Lazarus for masterminding it—look out for his official image around August 1!—and thanks to The Chicago Reader for featuring my snapshot from that day in Best of Chicago 2015. (Flashback to the last year The Reader had a “Best Local Visual Arts Blog” category and guess who won, thanks to the best global blog following?)

And personal stuff:

• Seriously considering using this or this as my headshot for the children’s books I’m writing and illustrating. (When I was that age, I was doodling satirical newspapers like this one. Not sure which is my favorite: the President’s “sexual affair customers,” my downright wacky Mulan parody, Dennis Rodman as a literal Worm, or Michael Jordan auditioning for the Spice Girls. Zeitgeist.)

• I started a 500px. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (And was already spotlighted on the site’s Twitter. Thank you!) Since I’m slightly more discerning with what I upload there, however, you can find more of my photos on Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest.

Happy July!

10 Chicago art gallery exhibitions to check out in June

Here are my June art picks for Time Out Chicago.

In other news:

Chicago, get excited for Expo this September! A couple days ago I attended the exposition’s Gallery Announcement Celebration after which I walked into a restaurant just to take a picture and snuck onto a hotel rooftop and the enthusiasm was palpable. Until the fair arrives, you can read my past interviews with its President and Director, Tony Karman.

Chicago artists, be a part of this group portrait! June 20, in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. (While you’re there, check out the MCA’s new exhibition. Being inside a hot air balloon gave me flashbacks to Parachute Day in elementary school P.E. 90s kids unite!)

And thanks so much to Choose Chicago and Buzzfeed for featuring this photo I took of Marina City, Mashable and Conor MacNeill for featuring this photo I took of the Lincoln Park Nature Boardwalk, and Localiiz Hong Kong for featuring this photo I took of the Nan Lian Garden! (You can view more of my photos on Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest. And, to answer a question I’ve been getting lately, the camera I use is the one on my phone. I am all about sacrilege.)

Happy weekend!

9 Chicago art gallery exhibitions to check out in May

Prairie Fire by Hua Tunan.

Flowers aren’t the only things you can look forward to seeing in May. Here are my Time Out Chicago recommendations of gallery shows worth checking out next month.

(And, in case you missed it last week, here’s my post about a new collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.)

Also, I just realized that I never wished you a happy spring [because I was in Hong Kong during the equinox], so: Happy spring!

5 highlights from the $400M collection donated to the Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago.

I know, I know. In the last post I said I’d elaborate on my Hong Kong trip “in the next post.” I promise I’ll get to that within a reasonable time! (Snippets from the trip are on Twitter, and all photos are on Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest.)

But! It’s time to celebrate, art lovers. The Art Institute of Chicago will receive the largest gift of art in its 136-year history: 42 internationally recognized contemporary art masterpieces, donated by local collectors and philanthropists Stefan T. Edlis and Gael Neeson. The collection will be on permanent view in early 2016. In a new post for Time Out Chicago, I’ve picked 5 highlights.

8 Chicago art gallery exhibitions to check out in April

Hutments by Nancy Lu Rosenheim.
(Image courtesy of Hyde Park Art Center.)

I’m back! (More about my Hong Kong trip in the next post. For now, you can look through my travel photos on Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest. I also micro-blogged on Twitter.) And so are my local art recommendations. Here’s my Time Out Chicago post of 8 gallery exhibitions to check out in April.

8 Chicago art gallery exhibitions to check out in March

Matissification by Richard Shipps. (Image courtesy of Elephant Room.)

My art picks for March are on Time Out Chicago. Enjoy your weekend!