In honor of the United States’ 250th anniversary, the McAninch Art Center and Cleve Carney Museum of Art, in association with the College of DuPage Foundation, present Walking With Giants. Exhibition opens until October 2026.

My Career Narrative

My career as an artist began with the experience of becoming an immigrant. I was born in Canton, China, and came to the United States as a child, eventually growing up in Chicago’s Chinatown. Moving into a new language and culture required constant observation and adjustment. Drawing became one of the ways I understood what was around me. Much later, I recognized that the experiences I had considered personal were connected to a much longer Chinese American history.

I began my professional career in commercial art and illustration. That work demanded technical precision, adaptability, and the ability to complete complex projects under deadlines. It also trained me to move comfortably between drawing, painting, design, reproduction, and large-scale imagery. Those skills eventually became tools for a more personal practice.

Publishing gave me another way to return to Chinese American subjects. Father’s Chinese Opera, which I wrote and illustrated from memories of my father and Chinese opera, received an Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature Honor in the Picture Book category. I later illustrated Mountain Chef, written by Annette Bay Pimentel, about Chinese American trail cook Tie Sing; the book received the Carter G. Woodson Book Award. These projects strengthened my interest in connecting individual lives with histories that are often overlooked.

Over time, my work moved increasingly into museums and public space. 

In 2022, I created Chinese Opera, a mural on the Chinese American Museum of Chicago that returned a subject from my family history to the neighborhood where I grew up. 

In 2024, I painted the Chinese Kite Festival for DuPage Children’s Museum, a public artwork commissioned through Naperville’s Special Events and Community Arts program. 

In 2025, the Waves of DuPage: Beautiful Cities Public Art Project expanded my practice across an entire county. Working with the College of DuPage, McAninch Arts Center, Cleve Carney Museum of Art, and participating communities, I created more than thirty site-specific landscapes inspired by ukiyo-e. The designs became large-scale public murals, while framed versions were presented together during the museum’s Hokusai exhibition.

In 2026, I was selected with artist Judith Mayer for Walking With Giants at the McAninch Arts Center and Cleve Carney Museum of Art. The exhibition consists of ten approximately ten-foot sculptural silhouettes honoring influential American artists and performers. The museum handled fabrication and installation, while the artists were selected to concentrate on the design and surface treatment of the works. 

These experiences changed the scale of my practice, but they also returned me to the subjects that have been present throughout my life: immigration, cultural memory, family, labor, and belonging. From 2025 into 2026, work from Gold Mountain was exhibited as Land of Gold Mountain at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago. That project brought together concerns that had previously appeared separately in my books, paintings, portraits, and public art. 

I am now at a point in my career when the technical experience of commercial illustration, the narrative experience of publishing, and the scale of public art can be brought into a sustained studio project.