Audrey Chan Leads Nisei Week Arts Workshop

Audrey Chan leads an interactive arts workshop as part of Nisei Week activities in Los Angeles. | Artist headshot: Daniel Watkins

by Katie Dunham

On Aug. 19 and 20, artist, CalArts alumna Audrey Chan (Art MFA 07) hosts a free, all-ages interactive arts workshop in Little Tokyo as part of the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center’s (JACCC) 2017 Nisei Week activities.

Celebrating Chan’s commissioned artwork for the new Metro Regional Connector Little Tokyo/Arts District Station, the workshop invites participants to explore and engage with imagery from Los Angeles’ past, present and future, before adding their own drawings to a collective scene.

Will Power Allegory, Chan’s proposed artwork for the new subway station—currently under construction at 1st Street and Central Avenue Downtown—features a multicultural group of Angelenos honoring and summoning the ancestral spirits of the city in a procession inspired by the Bon-Odori dance of the traditional Japanese Buddhist Obon festival.

Chan was selected along with six other artists last year to create site-specific, integrated artworks for Metro’s Regional Connector Transit Project, linking Metro Rail’s Little Tokyo/Arts District Station to 7th Street/Metro Center. The new stations are slated to open in 2021.

Based in Los Angeles, Chan is an artist, writer, and educator whose paintings, videos, digital compositions and performances have been exhibited both locally and internationally. Since 2005, she has collaborated with fellow CalArtian Elana Mann (Art MFA 07) as the feminist duo Chan & Mann.

Held in collaboration with Sustainable Little Tokyo, the workshop will take place at the JACCC Plaza in front of the Aratani Theater in Little Tokyo.