Pacific Standard Time Week 21
Welcome to BANGSTYLE’S weekly coverage of Pacific Standard Time, which is now in its 21st week. Although we are getting close to the end of the festivities, there are still many great exhibits that are currently open for your viewing pleasure. Don’t miss out on this incredible experience. Pacific Standard Time will only be around until April, so be sure to take advantage of this amazing opportunity before it passes you by. This week, we will be exploring one of the great exhibits currently showing right now, ”‘Round the Clock: Chinese American Artists Working in Los Angeles” at the Vincent Price Art Museum, East Los Angeles College.
“Round the Clock: Chinese American Artists Working in Los Angeles presents the work of George Chann, John Kwok, Jake Lee, Milton Quon, and Tyrus Wong, contemporary Chinese American artists who employed their artistic abilities in their professional lives while remaining true to their own artistic pursuits in their personal lives. The exhibition will feature more than 100 works by these Los Angeles-based artists, including paintings, watercolors, storyboard illustrations, animation cells, drawings, photographs, film clips, and ephemera. Round the Clock will consider how these contemporary artists balanced their personal art-making and their professional demands; how they achieved success on their own terms in their commitment to making art in Los Angeles; and the significance of their contributions to the region’s artistic and cultural legacy”
This piece from the collection by John Kwok is called “Untitled” (ca. 1970).
“This untitled painting reflects John Kwok’s fondness for experimenting with abstract form and pattern and underscores the influence of Western modernism in his own artistic practice. John Kwok was born in Shanghai, China, in 1920, and died in Los Angeles in 1983. He studied art at Sacramento Junior College (1938–40) and Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles (1940–42). He designed window displays and signage for fine department stores, including I. Magnin and Bullock’s Wilshire, and spent the latter part of his career working as a freelance artist executing commissioned portraits, many for community figures and the local chapter of Jack and Jill of America. Nearly every year from 1947 until 1983, the year he died, Kwok participated in multiple watercolor shows and competitions around the country, winning prizes at the majority of these show”
Gouache on paperboard 40 x 30 in. Collection of The John Kwok Family John Kwok.
Be sure to check back next week for our continued weekly coverage of Pacific Standard Time, and be sure to check out the official Pacific Standard Time website for more information.
