Local Artist Evri Kwong – Angel Island is the Ellis Island of the West Coast, NOT!
1400 5th Ave
San Rafael
This event will be held in San Rafael City Council Chambers at 6:30pm.
The San Rafael Public Library is honored to present local artist, Evri Kwong, and his latest project:
Angel Island is the Ellis Island of the West Coast, NOT!
This is how Evri’s new project began…
It’s 2021. The story begins by me asking my uncle to share what happened to our family? How did we come to America?
His simple response was, “Why do you want to dredge up the past? I thought we are past that. Life is good now.”
I said, “I understand, but I have a daughter now and I want her to know our history in America.
Evri Kwong was born in San Francisco and raised in the Bay Area. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute where he received a BFA and MFA in Drawing and Painting. During graduate school, Kwong was awarded a full fellowship to study at the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant for Painting. Currently.
He is currently an adjunct professor of drawing and painting at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Kwong’s work is in numerous public and private institutions, most recently: “Unruly” at the Museum of Sonoma County. Also his work has been at the Triennial de Young Open 2023 and the de Young Museum Open in 2021. His work has been written up in international magazines and newspapers and cited in the book Asian American Primary Source Reader (2017, Yale Press) for a painting he made about Vincent Chin, and Worlds in Collison by Carlos Villa, 2021. He also appeared in the documentary film “Smitten” by filmmaker Nancy Kelly on the Rene Di Rosa Art Collection in Napa, CA, as well as “Breathe Made Visible” by filmmaker Anna Halprin, 2013.
New acquisitions:
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
The Ruben Center for the Visual Arts, University of Texas, El Paso
The University of New Mexico Art Museum
Here’s the Pacific Sun article that appeared after his art talk at the San Rafael Public Library June 2023.
Evri Kwong’s work has been featured in group and solo exhibitions across the country and abroad, including: Catharine Clark Gallery, SF; George Krevsky Gallery, SF; Southern Exposure Gallery, SF; Heidi Cho Gallery, NYC; Asian American Art Centre, NYC; Alternative Museum, NYC; David Beitzel Gallery, NYC; Track 16 Gallery, LA; Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica; Dwight-Hackett Projects, Santa Fe, NM; Gerald Peters Gallery Project Space, Santa Fe, NM; San Jose Museum Of Art; Triton Museum Of Art; Museum Of Sonoma County; Crocker-Kingsley Museum of Art; Rene Di Rosa Preserve, Napa; Lancaster Museum Of Art, PA; deSaisset Museum, Santa Clara; Ross School of Business (University of Michigan); Stanford University Hospital; Haggerty Museum, Djerassi Foundation, (Woodside, CA); The Lannan Foundation (Santa Fe, NM); Gallery Godo, South Korea, Hana Bank in South Korea; among others.
“Painting is my meditation. Not passive, in action, like water.” – Evri Kwong, Artist
This program is funded by the Friends of the San Rafael Libraries.
