I am a Brooklyn based artist hailing from the suburbs of Detroit. As the first American-born Chinese descendant of my family, I always felt a disconnect between the East and the West. To my friends in the states, I was too Chinese. To my family in Hong Kong, I was too influenced by Western culture. I guess you can say that I was born into an identity crisis and that uncertainty affected the work I created before I started The Fan Series. This series is an ongoing exploration and personal interpretation of Eastern and Western culture colliding. Aside from creating artwork that I can connect with, I am very much inspired by nature and ancient Chinese artwork, with a focus on different brush strokes seen in traditional landscape paintings. By utilizing a paper fan instead of a traditional canvas, I was able to create a hybrid of something customary and contemporary. For awhile, indigo and gold were my choice of color as a way to connect some of my more contemporary patterns to an ancient art form. As I experiment and transition this series into something new, I began to focus on red and gold -- colors that are also prevalent in Chinese artwork. I started out making hand fans and gradually had the desire to work on a larger scale. Eventually, I would love to be able to work with a fabricator to create a massive fan--think, 5 foot span.
@chaucakedesigns - instagram
