ARTISTS
2023
BALLOONSKI
I create balloon art installations and activations for all to enjoy.
CRYSTAL WAGNER
Contemporary interdisciplinary artist currently based out of Los Angeles, CA. Her large scale works have been featured around the world.
JENNIFER TRAN & JAMES SHEN
Jennifer Tran is an artist who considers language and translations. She explores how words and texts in public spaces can bring people together. James Shen leads Long Beach-based PAO and is founding principal of People’s Architecture Office, an international and multi-disciplinary design practice. His public art installations aim to be interactive and to encourage social connections. James also co-founded the Plugin House Company which builds flexible, low-cost housing solutions.
OLIVIA STEELE
My art is not about what I see... It’s about what I invite you to see.” Her simplistic interpretable phrases inhabit spaces of contradictory, confrontational or conciliatory meaning, manifested in multiple forms like neon, road signs, and now fire. Always symbolic and sometimes irreverent, her handwritten neon statements suspend time and motion as they crystalise the unity between landscape, semiotics and spectacle that engenders countless avenues for contemplation and inspiration.
RYAN GRIFFIN
Ryan Griffin is a visual artist based out of Los Angeles, CA. Griffin uses projected light as a vehicle to activate the environment in a poetic, performative and public way. The artist's practice incorporates drawing, painting, photography, animation and video, while extending these traditions through contemporary digital media tools to share unique experiences and stories.
2022
AMANDA YAMASHITA
As social creatures, people long to feel connected to others. Though the COVID-19 pandemic caused many to physically separate, we are united in our shared experience. As we celebrate being able to physically embrace one another again, may our shared experiences make our connections even stronger.
DEBRA SCACCO
Debra Scacco’s research-based practice spans the creation of studio works, installations, public art, curating, teaching, writing, community engagement and oral history. Her work may be found at LAX Airport and Los Angeles State Historic Park, and in collections including LACMA and the Hammer Museum.
OLGA LAH
Lightly Freely Happily is a collaborative effort that began the summer of 2021. Beginning with an online program for The Miller Room at the Billie Jean King Library in Long Beach, the public was invited to create wireform sculptures at home to be included in a final installation by Olga Lah. The project was a way to bring the community together during a time of isolation due to COVID-19. Additional wireform sculptures were created during a workshop with Catalyst at Art Supply Warehouse in February 2022.
Olga composed the installation with the unique wireform sculptures created by the community. This project was supported by the Long Beach Arts Council, Amsterdam Acrylic, The Miller Room at the Billie Jean King Library, and Art Supply Warehouse.
2021
BALLOONSKI
Balloon Art has come a long way from the dog and sword. Even though the balloon world is rapidly growing, there is still plenty of room to innovate. The aim of Balloonski is to think outside the box with forward intentions, while riding waves of the latest trends mixed with retro nostalgia. All to create a deep reaction for your enjoyment, or spark a real conversation about the world around you.
JAMES JEAN
James Jean is a Taiwanese American visual artist, known for both his commercial work and fine art gallery work. He is known in the American comics industry as a cover artist for various books published by DC Comics, as well as for his work for Prada, ESPN, and Atlantic Records. His work, which has been collected in numerous volumes, has been compared by The New York Times to that of Maxfield Parrish.
Jean was born in Taiwan and raised in New Jersey. He was educated at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, from which he graduated in 2001.
In 2001, Jean became a cover artist for DC Comics, garnering seven Eisner awards, three consecutive Harvey awards, two gold medals and a silver from the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles, and a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators of New York. He also worked in advertising, and has contributed to many national and international publications. His clients included Time Magazine, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, ESPN, Atlantic Records, Target, Playboy, Knopf, Prada among others. He illustrated covers for the comic book seriesFables and The Umbrella Academy, for which he has won six Eisner Awards for “Best Cover Artist”. In 2006 he won Best Artist from the World Fantasy Awards.
OLGA LAH
Olga Lah is a second generation Korean-American, born and raised in Torrance, California. She has resided in Long Beach for the last 13 years. She received a double B.A. in Studio Art and Art History from the University of California at Riverside. And also received an M.A. in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. She creates large-scale, site-specific installations that explore ideas on transcendence and existence. Her work has been exhibited extensively including at the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach; Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; Los Angeles International Airport. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, OC Weekly, KCET Artbound and Los Angeles Magazine.
SPENSER LITTLE
Spenser Little is a self-taught artist who has been bending wire for the last 15 years. He likes to make most of his designs out of one continuous wire strand, incorporating abstract and realistic images, kinetic sculpture, and sometimes snippets of text. His work has been shown in fine art galleries, music festivals, such as Kaaboo, Ripley’s Believe or Not, NPR, National Geographic, Vogue Italia, and he is the co-founder of local artist collective, the Cohort collective. He has lived In Oakland, San Francisco, and Seattle, and currently resides in San Diego.
TOM FRUIN
Tom Fruin was born in 1974 in Los Angeles, California. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Working with plexiglass, steel, plastic, and scrap materials, Tom Fruin takes on urban objects such as houses, billboards, and flags, elevating their form to emblematic status and architectural scale. Fruin collects sign shop offcuts and brightly-hued plexiglass pieces throughout Chinatown, which he then weaves into striated grids. Illuminated from within and constructed in municipal locales, Fruin’s works dim to their own internal rhythms, becoming beacons of color and temples of light that dot skylines and community parks around the world, such as his re-interpretations of now-iconic Brooklyn Water Towers. His work is a part of many international museums and collections, most notably The Hanck Collection at the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany; the Richard J. Massey Foundation for Arts and Sciences in New York, NY; and the Buenos Aires Design Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
WAN-JEN CHEN
Born in 1982, Chen Wan-Jen graduated from the Fine Arts Department of National Taiwan University of Arts. He uses continuous loop video to create feelings of absurdity and humor. For his earlier work, he filmed pedestrians, then used image editing software to erase the background around each figure, and finally placed the figures into the same video. In some works, the moment before some disaster strikes repeatedly appears, imparting the work with a perilous atmosphere. In these works, the artist focuses on digital society’s apathetic and repetitive psychological state. His characters endlessly move as if they are hastening toward some unknown event that harbors infinite possibilities. Chen received the Grand Prize of the Taipei Arts Award in 2006, and attended a residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York in 2012. His work has been exhibited in New York, Berlin, Saint Petersburg, Tokyo, and at major museums and art spaces in Taiwan, as well as in other locations. Chen is an outstanding, high-profile video art creator.