User:Flo Oy Wong

Flo Oy Wong (born October 28, 1938) is an American contemporary artist, activist, writer, oral historian, and poet of Chinese descent.

Bio:

Flo Oy Wong, born Florence Wong, was raised the sixth daughter of a family of seven to Gee Theo Quee and Seow Hong Gee, immigrants from China. Born and raised in Oakland Chinatown she attended Lincoln Elementary School, Oakland High School, the University of California, Berkeley, and the California State University, East Bay. She graduated from UC with a bachelor's degree in English. As a child in Oakland while attending Lincoln School she also learned Chinese at the Wah Kue Chinese School and the Chinese Community Center. She began her art career at the age 40 after teaching elementary school and taking art classes at de Anza College and Foothill College in Silicon Valley.

Her art career, strongly inspired by the African American artist Faith Ringgold, spans 35 years with local, regional, national, and international exhibitions. She showed in several national traveling exhibitions, Women: Call for Peace, Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit, and The Complex Weave. On an international level she has exhibited in Beijing, Hong Kong, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Lusaka, Zambia. Her landmark exhibition, made in usa: Angel Island Shhh, was shown in 2000 at the Angel Island Immigration Station and in 2003 at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. She is represented by the Flomenhaft Gallery in New York.

She has partnered with many organizations - the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, the Euphrat Museum, College, Kearny Street Workshop, the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, the Rooftop School in San Francisco, and the Sacramento, CA Philharmonic. She has attended artist residencies, including Headlands Center for the Arts, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and Art Omi. As a visiting artist at colleges and universities she has presented at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Michigan, Ohio State University, Southern Connecticut University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison among others.

As an activist she served on the board of directors of various organizations: the Asian Heritage Council of San Jose (now defunct), the Asian Americans for Community Involvement, the National Women's Caucus for Art, and the Arts Council Silicon Valley. She is a co-founder of the San Francisco-based Asian American Women Artists Association.

She has written essays published in various publications, including Kristen Congdon's and Doug Blandy's Art as Pluralistic Criticism and John Jung's 2010 Sweet & Sour: Chinese Family Restaurants. She is currently writing poetry influenced by her sister

Nellie Wong and by Billie Collins, former poet laureate of the United States.

Her papers are housed at the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives.

Awards/Television Shows:

She has received awards from Kearny Street Workshop, the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, the National Women's Caucus for Art, and the city of Sunnyvale, CA. She is the recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts grants, two San Francisco Arts Commissions grants, and two artist fellowships from the Arts Council Silicon Valley. She has appeared on the national television show, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and the San Francisco KQED SPARK program.

Work:

Flo Oy Wong is a visual storyteller who narrates the extraordinary stories of ordinary people with a focus on personal, family, and cultural issues. She works cross culturally with different communities, among them the African American and Japanese American ethnic groups. Her collaboration with African American musician, the renown Marcus Shelby, celebrates the story of her husband's (Edward K. Wong) childhood of growing up in Augusta, GA during segregation. Her work, which meets at the intersection of art and history, is incorporated in college and university classes and in the curriculum of the Menlo Park, CA-based Art in Action (AiA).

Biblio:

Wong, Flo Oy (2008) 70/30 Seventy Years of Living, Thirty Years of Art, San Francisco, CA: Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, ISBN: 978-1-60585-420-5 Wong, Flo Oy (2007) Flo Oy Wong: Whispers of the Past, Sacramento, CA: 40 Acres Art Gallery, ISBN: 0-9759548-5-7 Wong, Flo Oy (2003) 1942: Luggage From Home To Camp, San Jose, CA: Japanese American Museum of San Jose, ISBN: 0-9742157-0-8 Wong, Flo Oy (2000) made in usa: Angel Island Shhh, San Francisco, CA: Kearny Street Workshop, ISBN: 0-960-9630-9-X Wong, Flo Oy (1992) Flo Oy Wong, Mills College, Oakland, CA: Visibility Press

References:

Wong, Flo Oy (2010) Sweet & Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants, Yin Yang Press, CA, pp. pp. 148 to 164 Wong, Flo Oy (2010) History As Art, Art As History, Routledge Press, New York and London, pp. 181 - 183 Wong, Flo Oy (2007) Encyclopedia of Asian American Artists: Artists of the American Mosaic, Greenwood Press, Connecticut - London, pp. 244 - 248

Wong, Flo Oy (2003) Women Artists of the American West, McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina - London, pp.56 - 57

Further Reading:

Wong, Flo Oy, (2011) A Complex Weave, Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey, pp. 50 - 51, 83 Wong, Flo Oy (2009) If I Didn't Care, Park School of Baltimore, MD Wong, Flo Oy (2009) Mei, Brandon, FL, pg.14 Wong, Flo Oy (2007) Art and the American Experience, Art in Action, Menlo Park, CA, pp. 26 - 36 Wong, Flo Oy (2005) Re-Do China, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, NY Wong, Flo Oy, (1999) Yellow Light: The Flowering of Asian American Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison (cover illustration and interview) Wong, Flo Oy (1994) Imagining Families: Images and Voices, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, pp. 23 - 24, 70 Wong, Flo Oy, (1992) Pluralistic Approaches to Art Criticism, Bowling Green Press