You know that I can never resist a good drip!

With the markets bursting with flowers and fruits right now, I’m sharing some new beauty work for the season, with prop stylist Kimberly Swedelius. With these images, we went for a looser, natural, laissez faire feel, with drips and imperfections left on the foraged fruits, and typically-invisible T-pins and floral frog structures showing through in the still lifes. And I opted for a gentler light than is common in a lot of product photography these days to really emphasize the soft beauty—and drama!—of the cosmetics.

Two of my pieces from the Asian American Still Life series have been invited to the Potluck group show at Hashimoto Contemporary LA–a show celebrating all things food art, curated by Dasha Matsuura. The show opens on February 12 and runs through March 5. I’ll be at the opening in the evening on the 12th, so please come by and say hello!

The two pieces in the show are near and dear to my heart–“Brueghel’s Breakfast” (pictured above) and “Onggi with Six Kimchi” (below). I’m so thrilled that Dasha picked these two as a set, because both of them feature food staples that play a huge role in the cultural fabric of LA: donuts and kimchi! For the show, I wanted to do something appropriately loud to go with all of the other wonderful food art painting and sculpture that will be in the show, so I opted to go really wild on the framing. I sourced two ornate frames from around LA, and over the course of a month, stripped them down and refinished them by hand in a lilac-y violet and gold leafing. I love the levity that they bring to the serious tone still lifes often have, and the cheeky irreverence the color brings to these very traditional gilded frames.

Swing by on February 12th (1-8pm) or anytime throughout the month to see them and the rest of the show in person!

“Brueghel’s Breakfast” and “Onggi with Six Kimchi” will be available framed and unframed. For more info, please contact the gallery, LA@hashimotocontemporary.com.

I’m super thrilled to share that select pieces from my on-going project, Asian American Still Life, were featured in an interview with photo editor Pia Peterson on Buzzfeed News this week. For a hot second on the morning of publication, my still life work was sandwiched above the fold between Ben Affleck, the Kardashians, and daily covid numbers–a definite highlight of my time with this project so far!

Read the whole thing here!