apature 2004: artists

Featured Artists   |   Participating Artists   |   APAture Retrospective Artists

Participating Artists

Primarily a crafter and supporter of the arts with a strong interest in photography, this is MYLA ABLOG's first installation. By day, she is a wetland biologist and confirmed tree hugger. Many thanks to her photographer and Bindlestiff Studio.

ANAMUDE's first experiences in performing arts were drama and theatre. But she was continually inspired by country blues, folk and classical guitar music and persevered in practicing acoustic guitar. When she started writing songs, her theatrical imagination became, and continues to be, a source for her lyrics and instrumental composition.

BANTERCUT STRATEGY is a serendipitous union of South bay and NYC sensibilities. Now solidly SF Bay-oriented -- and recently equipped with drum kit and drummer -- this band was almost called "Whiskey and a Cigarette." Here's to songs about love, pain, and coal mines.

TINA BARTOLOME is a queer mixed race pinay born and raised working class in SF to immigrant parents. Her writing and images are witness to the beauty, contradiction and pain existing in the margins. My first short narrative, "Mila's Will: Snapshot of a Frisco Native", premiered at the 2004 International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and her first short, "I Was Born Here", screened at the 2004 SFIAAFF.

LI BELTRAN is an artist and photographer living and working in the Bay Area. she is still searching.

THE BOGLEYS is an ongoing musical project by Rex, Rommel, and d Jake after their former band's break-up. Dave's arrival as a drummer completed the group in January 2004.

BUTT NUTT PRODUCTIONS is UC Berkeley students who came together with the forces of Theatre Rice.

RAE CHANG has been studying wushu for the past four years and performs with the Asian American dance company Facing East Dance and Music. She is inspired by her coaches Sifu Fong, Li Jing, Phillip and Mei Wong, and David Chang; her dance choreographer Sue Li-Jue; and her love of kick-ass women.

SANDY CHANG is a 26-year-old queer, Chinese American singer/songwriter based in Berkeley, CA. The warmth, clarity, and vibrancy of her voice illuminate her strong melodies, and her heart-felt lyrics reflect the vulnerability we all sometimes feel. For Sandy, songwriting satisfies the need for the long sought-after integration of a passion for music, training as a psychotherapist, and personal struggles related to identity, recovery, and being human. Sandy released her first EP, entitled Balancing Act, in May 2004.

SAMANTHA CHANSE is a writer/performer who moved to SF in 2001 and has been bitching about the weather ever since. A native New Yorker with a knack for public humiliation, she has written and performed theater pieces, particularly sketch comedy, with the Bindlestiff Pinay Collective and the Bindlestiff Players, and is also one of the Asian American Theater Company's New Works Incubators playwrights. She performs standup comedy in or around SF, and entertains fantasies of making music with her two-member ban bantercut strategy. Still pining for NYC, she spends most of her time with her three favorite APA arts nonprofits, Kearny Street Workshop (kearnystreet.org), Locus Arts (locusarts.org), and Bindlestiff (bindlestiffstudio.org).

MAX CHEN was born and raised in the Bay Area. Needing a change of weather, he went to college in upstate New York and came back with a degree in mechanical engineering. Since then it has been a mix of industrial/product design and metalworking. The only constant is comics and bicycles.

ODESSA CHEN’s debut One Room Palace has been described as "one of the strongest releases in the independent music world this year. . . delicate, wintry, intelligent, dark, and comforting." Her music has received acclaim in the Asian Reporter, Jade and Audrey Magazines and Asian Week, among others. In the last year she was toured the East and West coasts, welcomed drummer Rich Douthit and bassist Devin Hoff to her band, and sung on records by Charles Atlas and Thee More Shallows. Her music can be heard at odessachen.com

YIN-JU CHEN has been producing experimental videos and video performances for 3 years, since she moved to San Francisco. She graduated from San Francisco Art Institute New Genres MFA program 1 year ago. Before working in video, her works included photo performances, installations, and drawings.

PEIKWEN CHENG's work has appeared in USA Today, BPM, and the Delngenieur. He was recent selected for the 2004 Unframed First Look juried exhibition by noted artist Adam Fuss, Jack Pierson, and Cindy Sherman; and he was award a 2003 Cultural Equity Grant by the San Francisco Arts Commission for his series "Through the Eyes of the 22."

ANNIE CHEUNG received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004, and her BFA from the University of California, San Diego, in 1999.

BRUCE CHEUNG and Minhthybach are a pair of misfit and mismatched architecture kids from Berkeley.

CAMERON CHUN has been creating visual art since his childhood in Honolulu, Hawai'i. He started with super heroes and graffiti. Then moved on to receiving a BFA in Illustration from Art Center College of Design and an MFA in Figurative Painting from the New York Academy of Art. Most recently, Chun spent a few years living in Asia, learning Eastern Art Techniques to combine with his Western training.

NINA DE TORRES is a 28-year-old photographer. She was born in the Philippines and has moved to San Francisco in 1999. She graduated with a degree in Fine Art Photography from the Academy of Art University last May 2004.

ZACHARY DRAKE has performed with Theater Mu in Minneapolis as the lead in Sondheim's Pacific Overtures, with the Asian American Theater Company in San Francisco in The Importance of Being Earnest, with Northwest Asian-American Theatre's A-fest in Seattle in The Barking Wall, and with Mixed Blood Theatre in Eastern Parade. He has also worked with San Francisco Shakespeare Festival's school tour, Napa Shakespeare Festival, The Mountain Play, and Great American History Theatre in St. Paul.

JAMES ESPINAS is an independent filmmaker interested in socially conscious documentaries and experimental works in nature. He recently completed "Bloodlines: A Medical Mission to Iloilo, his first feature documentary. He studied under Alan Berliner at Atlantic Center for the Arts.

THE FACTORY is the advanced video production division of Youth Sounds, open only to select youth in the Bay Area. The Factory generates work explicitly for broadcast and festivals. Factory Work has been featured on KQED-TV, Youthspace.net, Listen-up!, Southern Exposure Gallery, The Oakland Box Theatre, and Youth Media Distribution.

GLORIA GALLEGA GALANG a Manila/San Francisco native received her B.A. in Art Studio and Asian American Studies from the UCSB -- with an emphasis on computer graphics, photography, printmaking, sculpture, typography, and video. She began freelancing as a graphic artist in 1993, spent 5 years as senior art director at a San Francisco advertising agency, and in 2001, launched Gg.galang DESIGN. As principal creative, her client list has run the gamut from AS Batle Company, Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians, Ozomatli, and 4th Market Records to Reuters Foundation, Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services, McCann-Erickson, and Wells Fargo. As an artist/designer, Gloria continues to find inspiration through the love of her family and friends and roots/reggae/dancehall/hip hop movement.

Born and raised in San Francisco, KATHARINE GIN is a writer, photographer, and educator. After receiving her bachelor degree from Yale University in 1994, Gin found and directed Hot Shots, a photography program for children living in Connecticut housing projects. She has also worked as a theatre photographer at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, and photographed extensively while living in Beijing. Most recently, she completed an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon.

CATHLIN GOULDING is a first year public school teacher of English with vague dreams of becoming a stand up comedian and/or video store clerk. When not grading papers or developing her John Wayne-esque teacher persona, she obsessively self-reflects in her online journal. She lives in Berkeley.

HIMALAYAN PROJECT consists of MCs Rainman and Chee Malabar. The duo formed in SF in 1995 and has since released two critically acclaimed albums. Their 2003 album "Wince at the Sun' received 3/5 stars in the May issue of URB Magazine.

JAMES HOU is the founder of SF based Avenue Films. His films The Pickup and Masters of the Pillow have received critical attention and continue to screen at colleges and film festivals across the country.

PHILIP HUANG's short stories have appeared in the following anthologies: Queer PAPI Porn, Best Gay Asian Erotica, Charlie Chan is Dead II, Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific Americana, as well as other publications.

Born in Hong Kong, now residing in San Francisco, KENNETH HUNG obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Arts degree from San Francisco State University in May 2001. The media Kenneth experiments with include Internet art, interactive installation, video, sound and performance art. Some of the venues Kenneth was invited to exhibit at include Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Cartwrighthall Art Gallery (Bradford, UK), C.S.O.A. COX18 (Milan, Italy), Angouleme Comix Festival (Angouleme, France), L.A. Freewaves Festival of Experimental Media Arts (LA), Fumetto Comix Festival (Luzern, Switzerland), and Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival for Expanded Media (Stuttgart, Germany), to name a few.

ILL-LITERACY was formed when a little boy who had just bought some people of color from the pet store tripped and fell, dropping them into a sewer. They landed into green mutation ooze and were transformed in to wannabe spoken word gangsta ninjas.

THE INVISIBLE CITIES is a San Francisco-based band that makes incandescent, sometimes-quiet, sometimes-loud rocknroll pop music with wiry guitars and boy/girl harmonies. They just released their debut record!

CHIEI ISHIDA received her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute and has been featured in "Close Calls" in the Headlands Center for the Arts in 2004, and was a recipient of The Murphy's Fellowship Award in 2003.

HELLEN JO sucks. But her comics are okay. Visit http://hellen.gq.nu

ATHENA KASHYAP lives and writes in San Francisco. She recently became gainfully unemployed and hopes to work full time on her two collections of poems and collection of short stories.

SYLVIA QUAN LA paints and draws. She feels like an artist when she carries that motion of painting and creating into the ordinary things she does, like cooking, walking, having conversation. She feels honored to be among a vibrant talented Asian American community of creative people.

A native of Dublin, CA, AMY LAM is a graphic designer currently employed in Berkeley. When she's not doing design favors for Hyphen Magazine or local politicians, Amy can be found lurking in the background of Kearny Street Workshop and Locus events posing as an artist/writer type.

BETSY RUTH MING-LAI LAM was born in Detroit, Michigan, grew up in Palatine, Illinois, and now lives and works in San Francisco, CA. Betsy attended the University of Iowa, Iowa City where she earned a BA in Journalism and a BFA in Painting with Honors. In 2004, she received her MFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute.

JULIA LAU is a singer-songwriter based in Oakland, CA. Her emotive acoustic alt/rock songs speak to the craziness and beauty of life, love, and struggles for justice. Julia worked for several years as a community organizer in Chinatown, and for the past 3 years has been working fulltime as a singer and musician. She performs regularly with her band in venues throughout the Bay Area. And, her debut album will be released later this year. Her lead guitarist and partner Noel de Guzman is performing with her tonight. For more information, visit www.julialau.net.

NARISSA LEE graduated from UC Santa Cruz Film and Digital Media Department. She is a native San Franciscan.

JANINE LIM is a San Francisco native. She is a self-taught photographer who has been shooting and printing for 3 years. "Christnation," a photographic exploration of Christianity's role in Philippine society exhibited in APAture 2003. She also performed in "Waking Dreams" that same year. This is her first cinematic attempt.

CATHY LO is an aspiring artist and designer who likes to push the boundaries of human existence-the limits of reality of life, of our capacities, and of our sensory perceptions. Her recent artwork is increasingly inspired by the complexity of visual sense. She received her BA in Fine Arts and Architecture from UC Berkeley in 1994 and is currently working as a user-interface designer in San Francisco.

JOYCE LU has been crafting autobiographical performance work by herself and with others over the past 107 years. Most recently, she assistant directed and performed in a dance theater piece entitled "Thinking Myself Home," directed by Carol Murota. Joyce has an MFA in Asian Performance from UH Manoa and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley where she teaches acting. Joyce was also KSW's first office manager! :)

MARISMA is a melodic indie rock quartet based out of Fremont, CA. Since 2003, the group has been winning over San Francisco Bay Area audiences with its catchy songwriting and energetic performances.

It's hard to explain where MIKI HIGUCHI came from or how she crawled down so far. It's a topic that most people choose to avoid. Besides making you squirm and unable to sit comfortably, she is usually found giggling silently or looking at you not quite sideways. Not once has she ever conquered the world, and stranger yet, has not even come close to really trying; but for some reason thinks about it on most days, especially the sunny ones. Bottom of center and left of reason, Miki tries to do what she likes and hopes it is kind enough to like you back...

MAKO MATSUDA is a creative writing major at San Francisco State who hopes to expand the Asian American poets' identity.

CRISTINA MITRA is a mixed heritage Filipina/Chicana born and raised by native San Franciscans in the Excelsior District of SF. She took her first class in video production with Madeleine Lim and produced "Off the Map" in 2003, which premiered at the 2003 National Queer Arts Festival. She aims to continue video production and reclaim dance as her primary art form.

GOH NAKAMURA cut his teeth on the Boston music scene providing "stunt guitar" work for various local bands. After returning tot he West Coast to write and record his own songs, he['s been stewing up a bittersweet collection of musical confection to delight a loyal following at local bars.

SUSAN NAKASORA loves and hates to write when life is not distracting her. To this day, she is grateful for the support and feedback given by her English and Creative Writing professors at UC Berkeley, including the one who told her she was mean to her characters.

ANNE NGAN NGUYEN is very happy that she is (finally!!) a graduate of the graphic design program at the California College of the Arts. Anne likes Sunshine, warm boba tea and long walks on the beach. When she isn't busy kerning, tracking or playing with the baseline type, she likes to make sculptures about being an Asian American woman. Anne's future plan is to make beautiful movies.

DANNY THANH NGUYEN is a humorist, whose side-projects include the literary-trash phenomenon ‘D.J. Berkeley’ and the Vietnamese Artist Collective. As a senior editor for HIFY he teaches writing and ‘zine-making workshops for young people. He was a featured artist commentator for the short documentary “Emergency”, and an Olympiad of the Arts recipient in 2001. His writing has appeared in /Rudolf’s Diner/, /The Yellow Journal/, /Vital Signs/, among others; and he's been presented by venues including Locus Arts and the Harvey Milk Institute. Danny lives in San Francisco, and thinks the Vietnamese need more than just three surnames.

O/CELLOTRON is a coming together of 3 musicians of various skills. Haruna Madono is a classically trained cellist, Peter Wong an electronic and experimental musician, and Richard Wright is a DJ and electronica musician.

CIELO ORESTE received her BFA in Illustration at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 2002. She currently resides in Oakland, CA showing work at various venues including the SomArts Cultural Center, Liminal Gallery, Studio Z, Oaklandish and Town Hall Restaurant in the Bay Area. She has also done freelance illustration for Hyphen Magazine of SF, Round Online Magazine.

Working with wood and other materials has allowed SUE PAK's ideas of story translation to speak a visual representation of her own family. Scrapwood and sawdust has become a second skin.

CAROLINE PARK is a Korean-American artist who has been a photographer for over five years. Caroline's current photography pieces involve understanding how environments are integral to her daily life, including how she emotionally experiences them. Caroline is a new resident of San Francisco and is excited about working with her new community through her art and activism. She is currently a literacy/health/sexuality/art educator.

STEPHANIE PAU was born in San Francisco’s Chinatown, raised in the East Bay, and has been writing about herself in third person ever since. After various incarnations as lab rat, soil analyst, field archaeologist, and non-profit slave, she is currently stationed in the museum profession. The bullet points on her c.v. remind her that she has worked as an exhibitions designer and registrar (various); in interactive design (Heart Museum of Anthropology); and as a curatorial assistant in Botany (California Academy of Sciences). Currently she produces educational programming on and works in the midst of artists much more accomplished than herself at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Working on the daily basis with the ephemera, mementos, and objects of our common heritage, Ms. Pau has developed a peculiar fascination for the hyperreal worlds of diorama-- the simulacrum of our “real world”, which at once ape, reflect, and transform the ways in which we view ourselves. In the tradition of Betye Saar, Joseph Cornell, and the Victorians, she creates “assemblages” that encapsulate, and make a spectacle of, her inner world. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology from UC Berkeley, and is completing her M.A. in Museum Studies from San Francisco State University.

JANAKI RANPURA graduated from Yale University and got her start performing in Bread and Puppet’s Resurrection Circus in New York City. Since training with San Francisco’s Shadowlight Productions, she focuses on shadow puppetry. She performs multimedia cabaret with Steff Casella in their company, InvisibleBee.

JEROME REYES is a multimedia artist whose work currently deals with the potential crossroads of labor, race, child culture, technology, and institution. Born and based in San Francisco, he is currently completing an individualized fine arts degree consisting of Visual Criticism and New Media at the California College of the Arts. Jerome has recently shown and is in the permanent collections of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Togonon Gallery. He is also credited with designing the first Filipino American Visual Art History university curriculum (Spring 2003, 2004, a the University of San Francisco) along side mentor Carlos Villa.

GAYLE ROMASANTA is Bio co-founder and editor of California College of Arts Literary journal Eleven Eleven. She is also a filmmaker, musician and writer. Her work has been featured on National Public Radio, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Houston Asian American jazz Festival and SF Int'l Asian American Film Festival.

MUKTA SAMBRANI taught English and worked as a journalist in India before coming to San Francisco. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, a book of poems, The Woman in this Poem Isn't Lonely, published in India and work in Hyphen, Fourteen Hills, Verse and other journals. Mukta is the recipient of the 2003 Audre Lorde creative writing award.

Educated in Canton Normal Institute in 1995, DA SHI has been a photojournalist in Canton Express since 2001. His work has been shown in the Guangzhou New Photo Exhibit 2003, Ping Yao International Photography Festival 2003, China Humanity Photography Exhibit 2003.

AMANDA LEE A. SOLOMON graduated from the University of San Francisco with a BA in English writing. She is a 1st generation Filipina American who like to write about family, culture, and make-up--the important things.

Emerging from the low-key Bay Area punk/indie scene, SPUTTERDOLL members Bernadette, Rio and Dennis all pump out a blend of punk rock resembling their influences, yet you still can't quite put finger on their sound. Bobbing your head to melodies ofadolescent experiences, outlook on the little things, and ex-significant others, you realize that it's not about them, it's about you. Sputterdoll doesn't play only to the San Francisco crowd, they've taken theshow on the road touring up and down the West Coastthrice, including several California tours, in the band's three years of existence.

The San Francisco-based band STEREOSTAR FM first burst into the underground music scene in early 2003 under the name puddingStone and in a short time has built a growing and steady following with its hard-rocking pop-punk hooks and energy. In February 2003, the band release a four-song demo recorded with Hayward-based Art of Ears Studio produce Andy Ernst (Green Day, AFI, Rancid).

TENSEGRITY NINE is the Oakland, CA-based electronic pop duo of Peter Lim and Matt Payne. Peter sits at home next to rain-drenched windows and writes the words, while Matte bangs on the electronic instruments with a bit more precision than 2-year-old on a Fisher-Price piano. Blending J-pop, acoustic rock, hip hop, experimental noise, children's spiritual, and spoken word poetry, Tensegrity Nine has become locally known as the "anti-genre" band for the new millennium. Formed in December of 2003, Tensegrity Nine has played shows at Epic Arts Studios in Berkeley, CA, The Canvas Gallery in San Francisco, CA, the Oakland Metro in Oakland, CA.

KY-PHONG TRAN translates as strange wind, fitting that an exiled child of the Vietnamese Diaspora be named after the wind, one of the earth's original elements that fears no borders. A writer from many places--Saigon, Alabama, North Long Beach--he calls Oakland home for now. He writes to breathe and dares to imagine a better world.

THUY TRAN is a Vietnamese-American woman artist and Bay Area native. Making art compels her to live and living compels her to make art.

TONY VADAKAN sleeps, eats, and makes zines; not necessarily in that order. Broken Umbrella (no. 2) is his most recent zine creation. It is a love letter to San Francisco and his friends.

JUSTINE VILLANUEVA is a San Francisco-based writer.

ELIZA WEE was considered a good child because she was happy to sit and draw for hours. At her "Dohl Sahng" (1st birthday party) her parents were disppointed to note that she grabbed a pen rather than money. She is now considered a bad adult because she'd rather sit and draw for hours than become or marry a doctor.

CHRISTINE WONG, 27, is a Chinese American artist. Her work - including mixed media paintings, woodcut prints and murals - have been exhibited locally and nationally. She holds a BFA from California College of the Arts, and has been recognized with a Women of Color Resource Center Sister of Fire Award.

JENNY ZHANG is a conceptual artist who loosens norms. She is currently working with prints in order to unravel print advertising mores, has worked with video to rework to television advertising and film and has worked with costume to neutralize fashion. Jenny immigrated to the United States when she was seven years old from Shanghai, China and has lived in Queens, New York, San Francisco, and now resides in Oakland, CA.

RUI BING ZHENG is a young queer woman of color recently transplanted from Brooklyn NY. She is enjoying her time in the Bay Area and hopes to do more work with the APA arts community here.

EDDY ZHENG is a Chinese American inmate who has served over 18 years of a seven-years-to-life sentence. Convicted of a robbery at 16, Eddy is now 35. He has taught himself English, completed his GED and earned a college degree while incarcerated. He has self-published two zines in prison, and he organized the first poetry slam at San Quentin State Prison.