It’s rare that Rosemead is known for anything. My church sits right at the edge of the city… there are some local eateries, nail salons, and a bunch of auto mechanic shops. From what I can tell, the city is predominately Latino and Southeast Asian… a bunch of immigrant families… as one can see from the local Starbucks (I call it the “old-chinese-man-starbucks”).
But now there’s a gallery in Rosemead.
Our entry way. The entire gallery was constructed out of donated wooden pallets. Shoplights were used for accent lighting
We had our opening show 2 weeks ago with a group of neighborhood artists. It was an amazing show and an amazing experience. We had an estimated attendance of over 100 come through our doors. It was really cool to see the artists, their families, the community, and our church all in one place.
I’ll begin with the most exciting thing: PICS.
Our gallery. With the help of Don Liv, Dennis Chow, Stuart Kobata, and a big group of men from our church, we put together these gallery walls. I love it!
We had live graffiti art at our opening show. So cool. Everyone (including a bunch of children that stopped by) was captivated by 3 of our local artists exhibiting their talent…
Sabez doing some live graf-art. He's an awesome artist and a nice guy. He had a really cool piece inside the gallery as well.the materials. Graf-artists use special paint for their work. it's really some interesting/amazing stuff. their technique is really cool. i have a huge respect for them.I love this pic. Our Rosemead "Graf Heads" around our live painting area.Rever Reves working the spray cans. His mom and sister liked the painting so much, they took it on the spot! haha. It turned out to be an awesome piece! I like his work.Potent One (Arturo) doing some live graffiti art.We had free sketching lessons by USC prof Miller Fong. I'm not a fan of USC, but I'm a huge fan of Miller! He was a HIT. Throughout the night he was surrounded by all sorts of people trying to learn from the sketch sensei! The local artists really connected with him. Thanks Miller!!Our guest DJ: DJ Mixtine of Scratch Academy! Mix is a great friend of mine from church. Her heart for the community, music, and Jesus make her the BEST choice for this venue. She played some "whicka-whicka" FRESH beats throughout the night. Haha. She raised the cool factor about 30 bajillion notches. Notice the camera and monitor I hooked up to give spectators a view of Mix's mixing. Cool eh?
I’ll show some pieces from the gallery next. These are random pics to give you a sampling of the phenomenal talent of our artists. To show all the pieces would be way too much for this post so I’ve created a gallery showing all the pieces on another page on this blog. Go to the top menu to see pics of all the pieces.
Squeeze's piece. He helped build the gallery as well. Really cool guy... and talented too! The detail in his work was amazing. I want him to do a GIANT piece for our next gallery.nineoutof10 productions. These guys (Johnson and Derek) were a huge help to our gallery. They had some amazing t-shirt designs and a sampling of some of their video production playing. They brought some really cool variety to the show... plus they brought two of their artists/designers to showcase more work!Steve Gazcon. This guy had some PHENOMENAL stuff. He's the designer for nineoutof10. I like his work a lot. His boards were really appropriate because there is such a large skate culture in the city.Potent One. This painting was the most sought-after of the night. Really cool stuff, done entirely with spray cans. It sold by the next day, but I know of many others who were sad that they couldn't buy it.RUDE painted this really cool piece on recycled wood. It was the first piece you saw when you walked into the gallery... so awesome.Better late than never. Cristian put together this really funny video. Notoriously Cristian, he came about 3 hours late to the show to turn in his video so only those that were here past 8pm got to see it. All work was supposed to be turned in the week prior. When I saw him, his words to me were, "Hey. I'm late. But I came." HAHA. Good job, man.
The show is over, but we’re planning our 2nd one for March. I can’t express how much work was put into the show by all of our team. Don Liv, one of our main gallery designers helped tremendously with getting pallets, designing the flow of the gallery and helping us produce the show. I couldn’t have pulled this off without him. Stuart Kobata, Dennis Chow, Albert Lew, Hoover Ng, and Benne Wong (along with a bunch of other Evergreen men) constructed all of our pallets. They’re engineering design skills made all of our structures possible. My own Fara Choi, with Leslie Chow, Jenny Trinh, and Jasmine Chao put together a delicious refreshment station with cheese, fruit, and crackers. The food was a hit! Sam Yau provided some top-notch security, and of course, Miller Fong and DJ Mixtine were our resident celebs for the evening! And I cannot forget our artists… led by Arturo Flores, along with nineoutof10‘s group… there can be no show with no art! hah.
Stay tuned. Our 2nd showcase at Evergreen happened one week later. I’ll update that soon…
Onigiri Everyday 
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