We sat down to chat with 2020-21 Printmaking & Book Arts Resident Jessica Cheng to discuss her journey as an artist as well as our Artist Residency program here at Flower City Arts Center.
Cheng is a native of the Rochester area and grew up in the town of Pittsford, NY. She attributes the start of her artistic journey through her love of comics, drawing, and support from tremendous teachers. After high school, she attended Alfred University where she studied courses in Chinese & German languages and Social Science, and ultimately received a BFA in Fine Arts.
Cheng describes her experience at a liberal arts college vs. an art school as being important to her personally, as she could implement her studies in culture and society simultaneously in her art studies. She also made the decision to major in Fine Arts instead of Illustration, and focused her work on printmaking.
Cheng has been featured in exhibition at Harder Gallery at Alfred University and at The Cube Gallery in Alfred, NY.
Looking at Jessica Cheng’s current artwork, it’s evident that she desires to share her perspective as someone of mixed race, and her personal struggle to piece together and amplify remnants of her Chinese identity.
“Italian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, any family of immigrant peoples, has artifactual traditions they cling to,” Cheng reflects, “I call this their gabagool. A piece of immigrant culture unifying them as a people.”
Gabagool is the Italian-American word for a variety of cold cut ham.
“I want to explore what it means to be someone of a mixed-race or multicultural origin,” she continues, “and having a dialogue around that, and preserving the gabagool.”
Cheng states that the tumultuous election at the start of her time at university greatly influenced the topics she studied, which in turn motivated her style of printmaking. The current pandemic and the political landscape we have experienced recently – specifically with race, immigration, cultural appropriation, and xenophobia – are also topics Cheng hopes to exemplify and discuss within her work.
Jessica Cheng found out about the Artist Residency program at Flower City Arts Center through two past Printmaking & Book Arts Residents, Susan Doran (2016) and Paige Moreland (2018). Doran is the mother of one of Cheng’s friends and Moreland attended Alfred with Cheng and has a similar style of printmaking.
When asking Cheng what advice she would give to an artist who might be seeking a residency, she says, “Stay organized and stay connected within the community around you. Find opportunities and achievements, no matter how small, to keep you going and uplifted.”
To keep up with Jessica Cheng and her work, be sure to follow her Instagram @jessica.cheng.og. If you are an artist or know of an artist who might be interested in our program, please visit our Residencies page here – applications for the following year are due by April 15.
Below are some examples of Jessica Cheng’s artwork, along with a paragraph for context.
My current work at The Center has been focusing on reclaiming authority over Chinese and Chinese American visual culture as a method of anti-racism. Systemic de-Asianification of Asian cultures has endured millennia, and the practice of stripping Asian ownership of art, craft, culture, history, and material for non-Asian profit is alive as ever. My work so far in “x-x,” “xAx,” and “xOx” reclaims Chinese and Chinese diaspora imagery and symbolism to identify sacred visual culture for Chinese Americans. The ability for marginalized communities to have exclusive access and authority over their history, representation, media, culture, and means of production of those things is my preferred method of justice and progress. While products of that method absolutely can and should be shared with allies outside of the community, some things must be reserved for it to be true justice.
Jessica Cheng