Panel discussion this Saturday, July 21

Hi y’all,

I’m going to be in a panel discussion this Saturday afternoon. Here are the details:

Asian American Women Artists Association
CHEERING THEIR MUSES!
Major Exhibit and Anthology Release by Premiere Arts Organization
Honors Women Who Inspired Them

The Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA) celebrates the arrival of their latest creation, a soon-to-be-released anthology titled Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women (expected publication: August 2007) with a panel discussion from select artists and writers featured in the book. The event will be held at the Chinese Culture Center gallery, where an exhibit of the same name displays work from over 30 different Asian American women visual artists and writers from the anthology. Featuring artists Lenore Chinn, Dawn Nakanishi, MariNaomi, Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen and Flo Oy Wong. Special guest Valerie Matsumoto, Associate Professor of History, UCLA will join panelists in this lively discussion.

PANEL PRESENTATION DETAILS:

WHEN:                July 21, 2007, 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

WHERE:             Chinese Culture Center, 750 Kearny Street, 3rd Floor

                              Hilton Hotel, San Francisco Chinatown

RELATED EVENTS:

Cheers to Muses Exhibition: June 15-August 25; Gallery Hours: Tues.-Sat. 10-4 p.m.

Book Launch: August 17, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

ARTIST/WRITER BIOS:

• Lenore Chinn is a San Francisco-based figurative painter, curator and consultant. Her acrylics on canvas showcase women, people of color, and lesbian and gay subjects and she frequently lectures on the importance of their inclusion in the fine arts. Chinn was included in Harmony Hammond’s groundbreaking book “Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History,” (Rizzoli, NY, 2000), the first study of American Lesbian visual artists. She is currently included in Kara Kelley Hallmark’s “Encyclopedia of Asian American Artists,” (Greenwood Press, 2007).

• Dawn E. Nakanishi was born and raised in California. She has been an artist and jeweler for over thirty years and taught art all over the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area. She currently heads the Small Metals and Jewelry area at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California.

• MariNaomi is a San Francisco-based cartoonist, writer, collagist and pop-surrealist painter. She has been self-publishing Estrus Comics since 1998, has been featured in various anthologies, and has been exhibiting her paintings and collages since 2002. She has performed live painting at such places as the de Young Museum, 111 Minna and Varnish Fine Art. She is always involved in multiple projects, currently including a watercolor series of sumo wrestling clowns and her autobiographical graphic novel, Kiss & Tell. Visit her website at marinaomi.com.

• Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen received her MFA in Creative Writing at Mills College and her work has been published in the Asian Pacific American Journal, Nha Magazine, and the Vietnamese Artists Collective anthology AS IS: A Collection of Visual and Literary Works by Vietnamese American Artists. In addition to writing, Anh-Hoa creates self-published and hand bound artists books and is a photographer, performer and printmaker. She is the founder of Pomelo Press and lives and creates in Oakland, California.

• Flo Oy Wong, a native of Oakland, California, is a mixed media installation artist and co-founder of AAWAA. Wong began her art career at the age of forty and has received many awards, including a Kearny Street Workshop National Endowment for the Arts commission. She is represented by the Flomenhaft Gallery of New York.

• Valerie Matsumoto is an associate professor at UCLA where she teaches Asian American history, US 20th century history, and women's history.  Her publications include FARMING THE HOME PLACE:  A JAPANESE AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN CALIFORNIA, 1919-1982 (1993), and a co-edited essay collection, OVER THE EDGE:  REMAPPING THE AMERICAN WEST (1999).  Her essay, "Renegades, Pioneers, and Visionaries:  Asian American Women Artists in California, 1890s-1960s," will be included in ASIAN AMERICAN ART: A HISTORY 1850-1970, edited by Mark Johnson and Gordon Chang, forthcoming from Stanford University Press. She is finishing a book on Nisei women and the creation of urban youth culture in the 1920s-1950s, and researching the life and art of activist Mitsu Yashima.

ABOUT THE ANTHOLOGY

Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women consists of 128 pages richly illustrated with 46 color plates. Featuring 64 artists and 77 visual and literary works by artists ranging in age from 14 to 85. (Paperback; $24.95 list price; ISBN-10: 0-9787359-0-0; ISBN-13: 978-0-9787359-0-6) Pre-orders: www.aawaa.net

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT

Curated by Cynthia Tom, the exhibit features selected art and written word from Cheers to Muses', visual art varying in media and dimension, fictional and biographic narratives, and poetry. In addition to the work of dynamic artists and writers currently working in the field, the exhibit as well as the anthology also includes moving dedications written by the contributors to non-familial Asian American women whose lives or works have influenced and inspired their own. Both the exhibit and the anthology support AAWAA's mission to produce thought-provoking projects that challenge, inspire, and interpret the work of Asian American women artists. Founded in 1989, AAWAA promotes the visibility of Bay Area Asian American women artists through programs that exhibit, interpret, publish, and document their work. For more information on AAWAA, visit www.aawaa.net.