Work
Directed
Directed
Vinyl, cardboard, spray paint, light bulbs, lamp wire cords
10″ x 4″
Work in Progress
You look pretty when you smile
You look pretty when you smile
Series of 5 digital prints on Crane Lettra
20″ x 26″
Work in Progress
Text Me
Text Me
Digital Video
Variable
January 2011
Text Me captures a moving portrait of texting. Today, communication no longer requires face-to-face interaction because we can rely on short terse phrases that ultimately become passive. Have we in a sense become all thumbs?
Watch the video here: http://vimeo.com/18895135
Still Smiling
Still Smiling
Digital Video
Height 5’ 3”
Luminous Deer
White Box Gallery
Portland, OR
June 4-25, 2010
Still Smiling is a video installation that captures a common phenomenon of social awkwardness–the polite smile–and focuses in on it, without extraneous factors.
Influenced by being in-between cultures, I often find myself in situations that I do not completely understand, but yet still must keep up appearances. Over the years, I have mastered this smile, and have successfully feigned full understanding to family members and other viewers alike. Although well-intentioned at first, Still Smiling exhibits the tension that inevitably appears as the muscle strain seeps through my face, and body language dissolves politeness into honesty.
Watch the video here: http://vimeo.com/11959149
Displace
Displace
Sandpaper, Paint
72”x 12”
Luminous Deer
White Box Gallery
Portland, OR
June 4-25, 2010
Displace is a text piece that visualizes my interior reaction to a moment or a situation of social awkwardness. Displace arises from the words, “space” and “place” and plays upon how language occupies both.
The most poignant example in my life is a family dinner. All at once, family members will talk to each other in Taiwanese, address the waiters in Cantonese, discuss money (and other private affairs) in Thai, and then attempt to include the kids in English, as a good-natured gesture. Despite the intentions, I often feel confused, awkward, and overwhelmed by the multitude of inaccessible conversation swirling around me.
I feel displaced a level below my family, unable to understand all the nuances because my Mandarin skills are not on par with the rest of my family.
Displace is the visual representative of those feelings–the word ‘Displace’ has been sanded into the wall–it does not appear on the same surface level as other pieces in the gallery, but must fend for itself, sanded into the wall.
Question Number Nine
Question Number Nine
Series of Five Digital Prints
22”x 30”
March 2010
This series of portraits explores the categorizations of people– judgements and assumptions made that were only skin-deep. The project’s name comes from question number nine on the 2010 census – “What is person 1’s race?” Every person photographed experienced an awkward situation about their race or ethnic group because of a snap judgement based on their appearances alone. Through this series of portraits, custom-made t-shirts correct any stereotypes that might be made, avoiding awkwardness and pre-judgement (almost) altogether. People are categorized by what they are not–and for once, it makes life simpler.
Special thanks to Thomas Martinez for help with lighting and photography.
Copy Cat
MeowMeow Presents Copy Cat
Collaboration with Liz Bayan
Digital Video, 1,152 Plastic Cats, Vintage Furniture
Variable
Copy Cat
John Ross Plaza Studio
Portland, OR
March 4, 2010
With the insemination of computers and the internet into our daily lives, the way we view ownership has been slowly changing. When the printing press was introduced and information was available, for the first time, people were no longer dependent on authority to educate themselves. As such, not only was the common person now literate, people began writing and taking credit for their creative endeavors.
Now we see something very much similar happening. The digital age has created a new sense of ownership. With the availability of handheld cameras, web cams and cell phones with cameras, the common person, has the means of creating. Video work is not longer solely in the hands of a select few. Anybody, anywhere can pick up a camera and film something. We are seeing a familiar trend in information insemination. And in fact, in information multiplicity.
Special thanks to Andrew Parnell for help with producing signs and packaging.
I took a nap, instead of thinking conceptually.
I took a nap, instead of thinking conceptually.
Collaboration with Liz Bayan
Text installation, Vinyl, Digital Prints
Variable
Edge Gallery
Portland, OR
January 18, 2010-February 26, 2010
You know you have done it. We have.
With 77 days in each term, we knew most of these days have and will be spent doing things other than thinking about a project. Some may simply call this procrastination.
We like to think of it more as a way of life. We all have those moments when concentration just isn’t possible, no matter how hard you try or how impending that deadline. We all have to struggle through that block one way or another.
On occasion, we like to take naps instead of thinking conceptually.
Fill out your own at http://toastandtea.org/nap/
Luminous Deer
Luminous Deer
Bachelor of Fine Arts Digital Arts 2010 Identity
September 2009-June 2010
For my Bachelor of Fine Arts year, I designed the identity for the class. Using deer antlers and neon lights as my inspiration, I went on to create a logo that referenced the White Stag on the roof of the building.
The Luminous Deer brand collateral includes a website, t-shirts, postcards, final show poster and various vinyl signage. Additionally, I designed and typeset the Bachelor of Fine Arts catalog, which showcases the work of thirteen artists who relocated to Portland for a fifth year of undergraduate study devoted entirely to the research and development of their terminal project.
White Orchid
White Orchid
Digital Video
Variable
Inspiration China
White Box Gallery
Portland, OR
October 8, 2009-November 20, 2009
At the most basic level, handwriting and painting are man’s most personalized forms of mark making. Each stroke or flick of a pen or brush tells us something inherently unique about the writer or artist. Many Chinese say that writing ultimately shows a person’s innermost character.
Chinese writing, like brush painting, has structured methods of creation with traits and techniques as distinctive as the artists who create it.
This project is a macro view of the choreographed dance between brush, ink, and paper. This video reveals a sensuous flow and tempo as the ink is diffused onto the paper in the most precise yet expressive way. The brush moves through the frame in sweeping and staccato movements. There is a give and take between the pressing and lifting of the brush as the ink meets the paper. It gives a pervasive look into a tactile process that is somewhat hidden – and nearly forgotten – in an increasingly digital world.
Thank you to Ming Fen Lee for her permission to be filmed and interviewed for this video.
Watch the video here: http://vimeo.com/6630994
Darwin’s Sublime
Darwin’s Sublime
Edition of 50 Letterpressed Accordion Books
10” x 7”
June 2009
Text written by George Gessert
Artwork by Olenka Burgess
Typographic design by Alison Ho
This book was handset in Garamond Bold and Futura Light and printed letterpress on mulberry paper at Haptic Eye Editions. All production—including typesetting, platemaking, printing, bookbinding, and embroidery—were done by Liz Bayan, Olenka Burgess, Amy Chan, Libby Corliss, Alison Ho, Colin Kull, Amy Lange, Alexsondria Miller, Kim Pearson, Emma Schluntz, and Harry Schneider, under the direction of Rebecca Childers.
“Darwin’s Sublime” is excerpted from George Gessert’s book, Green Light: Notes Toward an Art of Evolution, forthcoming from MIT Press.
Photographs for this project were taken by Alison Ho.
Project
Project
We love having you
Skateboard and t-shirt company
March 2009
In collaboration with Jess Andrews, Liz Bayan, Winter Gibbs, Alison Ho, Sean Kesterson, Nick Stokes, Steven Uppinghouse, Peter Yoon, and Associate Professor Michael A. Salter, we created a skateboard and t-shirt company. We designed 8 distinct lines.
Liz Bayan and Alison Ho made Project Grandma-essentially, a skateboard and t-shirt line for grandma.
Project Grandma is “perhaps the most elegant and the most sarcastic of all the lines; using doilies, needlepoint, and a refined sense of wit to deliver beautiful designs that come from way outside the skateboard world and reside even further away when they are delivered. proudly not skaters, these artists succeed in making the impossible, desirable.”
Alison Ho was responsible for photographing and making a Project publication, which is both online and for sale in print.
Yellow
Yellow
Moleskine Notebook, Blog, Acrylic
Edition of Six Silkscreen Artist Books
8”x 5” 60 pages
December 2008
Yellow is a journal project that invites the participation of the Asian-American community to share their experiences. Yellow effectively looks at the discrepancies between how people are categorized through statistical data and how they perceive themselves.
Yellow evolved into an artist book that used an entry from the Yellow journal project as its text. The images are taken from the Asian Population Census from 2000.
Please view the blog for Yellow at http://toastandtea.org/yellow/.
