CODAmagazine’s March issue on Transformative Walls is featuringWorlds Within Worlds, my Charlotte, NC laminated glass windscreen project, which was voted by their creative team into the top 25 out of 225 submissions.
Client: Charlotte Area Transit System Arts for Transit, Charlotte, NC
Location: Charlotte, NC, United States
Completion date: 2021
Artwork budget: $200,000
Project Team
Project Manager
Christopher Lange
CATS Arts in Transit
Fabricator
Kris Iverson
Moon Shadow Glass
Overview
Laminated glass 6×13-ft, etched glass 42×41-in. Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) Arts in Transit commissioned me to design 8 windscreens for 4 streetcar station shelters situated in the Elizabeth Area neighborhood close to downtown Charlotte. As of 8/19/2021 the project is still being installed. Additional images for 3 other stations will be uploaded soon.
Goals
The task was for me to research the history and tenor of the neighborhood and create designs that area residents could see related to the neighborhood. The integration of this task was critical to the overall design.
Process
I was walked through the neighborhood, introduced to a local historian who had prepared a file on the area’s history. I met 3 times with stakeholders/area residents over a period of 1.5 years. The first time I met with two of them, they were unhappy because they said CATS had waited too late to bring them into the project since my designs looked quite finished. That same evening they gathered a group of 25 to 30 residents so I could explain my thinking behind the designs as they stood, and get feedback/information from them of what they wanted to see. I asked them in 3 minutes to write the first 5 things that came to mind when they thought of the Elizabeth Area. They each read out their list and many were things like “friendly,” “community-oriented,” and I explained that I needed nouns rather than adverbs in order to visually summarize the idea. The only noun that kept coming up was “trees” because it is a leafy and wooded area. I proceeded to revise my designs by adding Art Deco “frames” around the designs and integrating trees into the design. I met with some of these people a final time, and they agreed that I had captured something about the neighborhood.
Additional Information
It was inspiring to work with such a passionate and committed group of residents/stakeholders. The Elizabeth Area is a historical area in a city that is very “new.” It is filled with Arts & Crafts houses and it has the feeling of being wooded because of the tall (old) trees and plantings. They are protective of their neighborhood for good reason: Thirty-plus years ago they suffered a trauma at the hands of a City Hall intent on cutting wide roads through the area in order to facilitate the flow of traffic into downtown. The City proceeded to raze a beloved large historical rose garden containing more than one thousand species of roses; they did so by plowing it under, not even saving seeds or clippings, thus eradicating everything that was there. The residents are still mourning the loss of their rose garden and feel the wound as if it had just happened yesterday. They continue to fight City Hall, that recently proposed building a sports stadium in the area.
Dear Friends, Two of my recent gouache and oil marker drawings will be on view in Matrixes Small Works at the Kate Oh Gallery, 31 East 72nd St. NYC. Opening Reception: August 9, 2022, 6:00-8:00 pm; Exhibition Dates: August 9 – 27, 2022.
The show features an array of contemporary women artists involved in a myriad stock of art practices. These works, shown together in a collective presentation, enhance each other and accrue novel, unexpected meanings. According to curator Jaynie Crimmins, “The artists … have traveled on overlapping paths in New York City’s art communities, and in their art practices. While their artwork demonstrate a variety of strategies and materials, and they are from diverse backgrounds, they appreciate their commonalities in a hectic world and divisive cultural moment, and pass around hats as to the curatorial/organizational roles each engages”
Amy Cheng, Untitled 2021-13 (Boulder), gouache and oil marker, 9 x 12″ image size
The artists in the show include:
Nancy Baker, Alexandra Rutsch Brock, Elan Cadiz, Amy Cheng, Nandini Chirimar, Cecile Chong, Esperanza Cortés, Beth Dary, Patricia Fabricant, Susan Hamburger, Jeanne Heifetz, Liz Jaff, Susan Luss, Christina Massey, Seren Morey, Ellie Murphy, Elizabeth Mead, Laura Mosquera, Kate Oh (Trabulsi), Pooja Pittie, Kay Sirikul Pattachote, Elizabeth Riley, Christine Romanell, Katherine Ryals, Carol Salmanson, Linda Schmidt, Sylvia Schwartz, Suzan Shutan, Shira Toren, Jeanne Tremel, Joanne Ungar, Kathleen Vance, Etty Yaniv, and Sung Won Yun.
Amy Cheng, Untitled 2021-14 (Double Perspective), gouache and oil marker on paper, 9 x 12″ (paper size)
Philosopher and Art Critic Ekin Erkan writes in her review:
“Cheng, Riley, Romanell, and Baker make use of geometric mosaics, challenging two-dimensionality with hallucinatory reverie—a partial standout is Cheng’s piece, which features an orbular sphere in the center of a crooning matrix, fitting given the show’s title. … The variegated nature of the exhibition’s unique elements, small in size when treated separately but grand in scale as a unified whole, makes for the show’s strength.”
Hello Friends, I invite you to join me on Sunday, June 12, 2022, from 2:00-4:00 pm for the opening of “Spheres and Sinospheres,” a solo exhibition curated by Sara Henry at the Voelker Orth Museum located at 149-19 38th Ave., Flushing (Queens), NY.
In the Middle of the Dream, limited edition archival print, 2011
The show features examples from three different series of my work including Mandala paintings from the 2010’s, oil paintings on paper informed by Chinese Folk Art from the 2000’s, and a small gouache and oil marker on paper from my current geometric abstraction series.
Caravan, oil on paper, 22 x 30, 2007
The official name of the museum is The Volker Orth Museum, Bird Sanctuary and Victorian Garden. It occupies a two-story house that was constructed in 1891. The house was purchased in 1899 by a German immigrant named Conrad Voelcker, who moved in with his wife Elizabeth and infant daughter Theresa. After Voelcker’s death in 1930, the house became the home of his daughter, Theresa Voelker and her husband, Dr. Rudolph Orth. Their daughter, Elisabetha Orth, who lived in the house most of her life, established the organization which now runs the museum in her will. The property was designated a New York City Landmark in 2007.
This exhibition was the brainchild of Sara Henry, an Independent Curator and Art Writer, Professor Emerita of Art History and NEH Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Drew University.
Arabesque 4, oil on canvas, 30 x 30″, 2016
The upside of going to Flushing, Queens is that it is where the new Chinatown is located with its restaurants, bakeries, tea shops, and other retailers. It is quite a contrast to the original Chinatown in Lower Manhattan: the streets are clean, the constructions are new, and the people look prosperous — it resembles current day Mainland China.
Untitled 2019-26, gouache and oil marker on paper, 8 x 9″, 2019
Dear Friends,
I am pleased to share with you images of Worlds Within Worlds, my recently installed public art project commissioned by Charlotte Area Transit Authority’s Arts in Transit Program. The streetcar shelters are located in the Elizabeth Area, a lovely, neighborhood shaded by many trees, and graced by well-maintained Victorian and Arts & Crafts homes, yet is conveniently located only a few bus stops from downtown Charlotte.
The windscreens were fabricated by Moon Shadow Glass, Portland, OR
Detail
Chris Lange, Project Manager and Pallas Lombardi, Arts in Transit Program Director
Photographs by Mitchell Kearney, Charlotte, NC
Detail
Interior of a Gold Lynx streetcar. Ceiling panels by your truly.
Beyond the Biosphere, consisting of two printed vinyl canopies measuring 17.5 x 105 feet, was recently installed at the Slauson Station in Los Angeles, CA.
Arabesque, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, 2015
I am participating in the 4th Annual Juried International Exhibition of Contemporary Islamic Art at LuminArte Fine Art Gallery, Dallas, TX. The exhibition was curated by Salma Tuqan, Curator, Contemporary Arab Art and Design, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK. The show runs from September 26 – October 31, 2015.
I am pleased to announce that I have joined the Mary Tomás Gallery in Dallas, TX where I have been included in two group exhibitions this year, COLOR and GEOMETRIC REPETITION.
I am pleased to announce my first solo museum show opening January 23, 2015 in Plattsburgh, New York. If you’re driving to Montreal it may be on the way!
My MTA subway project on the D Line at 25th Avenue, Brooklyn, was featured in the New York Times in October 16, 2014.
I had work included in two exhibitions, The Reason for Beauty, at the Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA curated by Sue and Phil Knoll, and 2014 Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region at the Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY curated by Stephen Westfall.
If you find yourself in or near Westport, CT, please drop by to see the Summer Rotation show at Amy Simon Fine Art.
About 15 minutes away, under the auspices of Amy Simon Fine Art three of my paintings will be shown in the atrium lobby of Riverpark (800 Connecticut Ave.) in Norwalk, CT through Fall 2014.
I was recently in a three-person exhibition. Chroma, at the Hudson Beach Gallery in Beacon, NY organized by Suzanne Ball and Carl Van Brunt.
And I was interviewed along with a group of immigrant Chinese-American artists currently teaching at U.S. colleges who belong to a loose affiliation called Across the Divide. The group has been showing their work together in juried exhibitions since 2004.
Time and Again
at
Central Booking
21 Ludlow St.
New York, NY
The opening is Thursday, Feb. 6
6:00-8:00 pm.
The show runs Feb. 6 – March 30, 2014.
I have three small paintings in the show.
I am also having a solo show
Amy Cheng: Irrational Exuberance
Tower Fine Arts Gallery
University of New York at Brockport
Tuesday, Feb. 11 from 4:00-5:00 is the opening.
The show runs Jan. 28 – Feb. 23, 2014.
There is an exhibition catalog. A PDF of the catalog is available on this site under News and Links
If you are ever at the Lambert-St. Louis, International Airport you can see two waterjet-cut ceramic tile murals I installed.
Nucleic Life Formation
measuring 11 x 15-ft and 6 x 24-ft are located near the airport’s MetroLink Station.
Photo of finished project: Richard Sprengeler. Installation photos: Jeffrey Lea
I have received a commission from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Metro Creative Services to design a set of canopies for one of the L.A. Silver Line stations. This is one of my proposed designs.
I was interviewed by CUNY TV for a feature called Study with the Best. My short segment starts at about 17:30 minutes into the program. It is followed by an interview with Robert Hickman who designed and fabricated the elegant and understated West 72nd St. Subway Station project. After him there’s a segment on Lucy McKenzie, a young Scottish artist who is very interesting.
To view the segment search online for: Study with the Best Amy Cheng
I visited Amsterdam in January. Here are a couple of photos taken in Rembrandt’s House. He lived here for nineteen years at the height of his success (1639-58). But he must not have been very good at managing money because in nineteen years he managed to pay off less than half his mortgage. He ended up bankrupt losing the house and all the household goods, moving to a smaller house where he lived the rest of his life.
Happy New Year ! I am fulfilling my resolution to send out newsletters twice a year.
In August I returned to New Paltz and resumed my teaching responsibilities at SUNY New Paltz where I was very happy to re-meet up with our very talented students.
