Creative Connections - Asian Pacific Heritage Month

April 4 - May 30, 2009
April 10, 2009 - Reception 5:30 - 8:00PM
Marcellus Gallery & Banister Studio Gallery

As part of May’s Asian Pacific Month celebrations in Hanford, the Kings Art Center with mount two exhibits by Asian-America artists.  We will exhibit the paintings of Kim Anno in the Marcellus Gallery, and the collage art of Leilani Wing -Shimizu, and the traditional brush paintings by members of the American Artists Association of Chinese Brush Painters, in the Banister Gallery.  
 

These exhibits titled, “CREATIVE CONNECTIONS”, focus on how and to what extent each artist has creatively used their cultural heritage to influence work of a diverse and personal nature. From the large “color-field” paintings by Kim Anno, to the very small collage work by Leilani Wing-Schimizu, and the traditional landscapes and calligraphy work of the American Artists Association of Chinese Brush Painters, all these artists bring to the Kings Art Center varying views, techniques, and materials that have their foundation planted firmly in a cultural heritage 

KIM ANNO, a Berkeley based artist and educator who’s art grew out of the abstract expressionist movement of the 1960’s, and has since been influences by Ukiyo-e prints, the physical body, and Islamic and Asian Architecture, works on large aluminum panels with translucent and opaque paint.  Her most recent work is drawn from studies and concerns for the global environments. Asked about her work, Kim has said; “I am looking for a provocation between illusionism and abstraction. The imagery I use is a movement of lines and forms that are made by hand. The lines are thin, causal and refined as in handwriting or calligraphy, but are distinct from decipherable words. These lines both fuse and float inside painted fields of form. Sometimes these are drawings and forms that suggest a kind of scratching, falling water, a fiesta, or a kind of adornment.  This ambiguity is the center of my fascination. I strive to make abstract paintings that rearrange something of the past while becoming essentially contemporary.” 

Kim has exhibited at numerous galleries and art museums, including the Berkley Art Museum, Varnosi Museum, Hungary, Marcel Sitcoske Gallery, San Francisco, Chautauqua Center for Visual Arts, New York, Peter Miller Gallery, Chicago, Patricia Correia Gallery, Los Angeles, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, and has taught painting for CSSSA at Cal Arts, Stanford University, and currently serves as chairman for the painting department for California College of Arts, Oakland CA. Kim’s paintings will be at the Kings Art Center, in the Marcellus gallery, from April 3 through May 30.  
 
 
 

LEILANI WING-SHIMIZU, was born in Hanford and currently resides in Fresno.  She is a fourth generation member of a prominent Hanford family who arrived from China in the early 1880’s. As an artist she first began in 2000 by studying and working in black and white photography. This creative outlet eventually evolved into her well know and current work in collage. This work grew out of a passion for collecting objects, of a Chinese cultural nature, while traveling or going through materials in her families China Alley property.   These materials included collectable Chinese antiques, coins, jade, and printed materials.  Once combined, the finished pieces evoke an all over sense of the culture, while drawing attention to the unique beauty of the individual pieces. It is in her ability to creatively combine materials while using a strong sense of design, that we see and recognize Leilani’s talent as an artist. Her collage work will be at the Kings Art Center, in the Banister gallery from April 3, through May 8.  
 
 

AMERICAN ARTIST ASSOCIATION OF CHINESE BRUSH PAINTERS. This is a group of fifteen mostly first generation Chinese Americans who work and exhibit together in the Bay Area.  They have studied traditional brush painting and calligraphy methods, both in China and America. The work in this exhibit reflects the tradition where the “Ink & wash landscapes” relies on vivid brushwork and varying degrees of intensity of ink to express the artist’s conception of nature, and their emotions and individuality, while in the Calligraphy work serves the purpose of conveying thought but also shows the abstract beauty of line. Their work will in the Banister gallery, from April 3, through May 8.

This outstanding exhibit is sponsored by Bank of the Sierra
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