Let's give a warm welcome to our fourth Visiting Artist of 2022, Lauren Hana Chai. Lauren is known for contrasting her traditional Korean upbringing with her modern American life and including a personal story or cultural narrative to accompany each piece. As the first in her family born in America, she was raised by her South Korean grandparents in Hawaii. She moved across the Pacific to San Francisco to study at the Academy of Art University. After some time following the technique-based curriculum, Lauren says she relished breaking the rules and mixing abstract elements into the work. Her current series places side by side traditional elements, such as Korean folk art and Buddhist temple architecture, and modern elements such as interracial relationships or sexually charged figures. She has been featured in NBC News, KBS World Radio, Houston NPR, and the Honolulu Star Bulletin.
In early 2020, Erie Arts & Culture launched a visiting artist residency program in collaboration with Long Road Projects. Through this program, Erie Arts & Culture and Long Road Projects provide contemporary artists with dedicated time and space to reflect, research, and create new bodies of work – outside of their usual environments. This program also creates opportunities for new perspectives and creative processes to be shared, which in turn positively impacts the cultural and creative landscape in Northwestern Pennsylvania.
This visiting artist residency program is made possible through the generous support of a privately funded grant from The Erie Community Foundation.