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Los Angeles Times
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
'Searching the Sky for Gold': Visiting Su Yu-Xin's new exhibition
The Orange County Museum of Art's (OCMA) new exhibit, 'Searching the Sky for Gold' by Su Yu-Xin, is a vibrant exploration of natural materials and landscape paintings. Premiered at OCMA for the first time on January 31, 2025, 'Searching the Sky for Gold' is Su Yu-Xin's first solo show, according to the official OCMA website. In this exhibition, Su uses substances found on the earth's crust to create her own pigments for these paintings. She views painting as a place where multiple disciplines can intersect, creating harmonious yet unique works of art. In a discussion about the creation of these pigments, Su told The Art Newspaper, 'I was trained in Chinese ink painting, where grinding one's own ink and preparing fresh animal glue is common… There are maybe three or four companies in the world that produce artist-grade oil paints. Realizing [sic] that almost every painter is working with the same selection of colours [sic] felt strange—like everyone cooking with the same limited set of ingredients. I wanted to see how far I could go with it.' The exhibit features large, rounded wooden planks with colorful paintings of various natural features, including mines in Utah, mountains in China, and the California coastline. With vibrant colors and flowing shapes that dominate the exhibition, Su creates a distinctly natural feeling that evokes a dissonance of the real and surreal. All of Su's works here are done on canvas with rounded edges. Su's unique approach to the medium of the canvas creates an immediately disarming environment within the exhibition, stripping away the preconceptions of the outside world, leaving only her message: vibrant and clear, an invitation to engage, a direct conversation between artist and witness. In addition to the many works hanging along the gallery walls, additional pieces are resting on the ground, while others are propped up by rounded wooden legs, mimicking the layering processes of the very materials Su uses. Through this layering, the audience becomes the artist, the miner, the excavator, digging through textures and materials, searching for the heart of it all. Using her handmade pigments, Su invites us to interrogate the very origins of color, color as a natural property, color as an unrefined resource, a byproduct of the earth we survive on. But 'Searching the Sky for Gold' is just as interested in the immaterial as it is in the material. Su uses this exhibition to also explore the visual effects of fog, air, and mist, the unseen forces that govern our day-to-day lives, unconscious and ever-present. 'These in-between states of air are like colours on a canvas that lack names—alive, nuanced and elusive. Painting is uniquely suited to house these air phenomena, because painting itself is made of particles. Pigments, suspended and floating, eventually fossilize into an image,' said Su. These fossilized images turn the invisible visible and ask us to reevaluate our relationship to the intangible. This transformation creates an exhibition that is ultimately a proud declaration of color and nature, and the ways in which they are inextricably intertwined. The title 'Searching the Sky for Gold' was inspired by the 1800s California Gold Rush and the cosmic origins of gold. It serves as a reflection of the immensity of time and space, a humbling reminder that many of the materials we have on earth used to be suspended in the sky, crashing down upon us millions of years ago. It is the unfathomability of this timeline intersected with the earthen materials grounding the artworks that creates the exhibition's central dichotomy. Through her works, Su offers us the opportunity to see the world anew, to connect the inevitability of the physical with the metaphysical, the present with the eternal, to realize we are all a product of mountains and rocks, water and wind, to allow us a moment of reconciliation with an ever-shifting universe within every pigment, every odd-shaped canvas, every moment of disorientation. OCMA is free entry, meaning that it costs nothing to see this amazing exhibit. It is an unforgettable experience that makes you question the relationship between the complex earth we inhabit and the things we create. Don't miss your chance to see 'Searching the Sky for Gold' by Su Yu-Xin before it closes on May 25, 2025. Related
Los Angeles Times
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Teen Spirit: youth culture at the center of OCMA's California Biennial exhibits
Over the past 10 months, a group of high school students from all over Orange County have studied art curation at the Orange County Museum of Art in Costa Mesa, developing wisdom and insight beyond their years. They've banded together as the Orange County Young Curators under the guidance of OCMA's manager of gallery Nate Bench and Delaina Engberg, coordinator of youth and family programs. 'I think a program like this is really about encouraging young people to have a worldview informed by art,' Bench said. Together the teens curated their own exhibition from OCMA's collection titled 'Piece of Me' after Britney Spears's 2007 song. Their show explores self identity, nostalgia and technology's impact on society, all through a Gen Z lens. The collection of work, which includes artist Alison Van Pelt's painting of Spears titled 'Britney' (2004), which has never been exhibited before, fits perfectly into the Costa Mesa museum's 'California Biennial 2025: Desperate, Scared, But Social,' on view now through Jan. 4. The show's title, taken from Orange County riot grrrl band Emily's Sassy Lime's 1995 album, features an installation of ephemera from the musicians. Arranged by Courtenay Finn, OCMA chief curator and director of programs; Christopher Y. Lew, founder of C/O: Curatorial Office and associate curator Lauren Leving, 'Desperate, Scared, But Social' examines the frustration and angst of late adolescence and early adulthood while still presenting instances of hope and inspiration. 'I think when you are young, you can imagine a future that doesn't exist and sometimes when you get older that feels harder,' said Finn. 'We need to remember that creativity and curiosity.' The 2025 California Biennial is organized across OCMA's Special Exhibitions and Permanent Collection Pavilions and features 12 artists and collectives. It begins with 'What She Said,' by Deanna Templeton, a Huntington Beach native who pairs photo portraits of teens around the world with scans of her own teen diary entries that begin in the mid-1980s. 'She is talking through that moment in time where you are trying to figure out who you are, how you fit in and how to express yourself, especially through music and fashion,' Finn said. The series is titled after a song by the Smiths. Templeton is particularly drawn to youth subcultures like goth, skater and punk; she documents teens from those communities almost exclusively. 'She had a really difficult adolescence, but also had these moments of ecstatic joy…she wants to share that journey with other teens to let them know no matter how awful it is, you can still come out the other side,' Finn said. In the Juvenilia section, now-established California artists share works they created when they were teens themselves. On the verge of self-discovery, paintings, drawings, ceramics, zine-making and music demonstrate early hints of the artists that Seth Bogart, Miranda July, Brontez Purnell, Laura Owens and Joey Terrill became. An installation of work by Griselda Rosas features embroidery skills passed down to her by previous generations, sewn over art made by her young son, Fernando. Stanya Kahn's 23-minute film 'No Go Backs' follows two teens as they leave the city and explore a wilderness void of adults. New sculptures by Woody De Othello are also on exhibit. Nearby, Heesoo Kwon investigates how much of our memory can be trusted, using A.I. to fill blank spaces and extend the frame of family photos from her youth in Korea. 'A.I. does these weird things, like in her birthday photo, it has replicated her several times, or in another case it filled out the room but added things that shouldn't be there,' said Finn. Those images are paired with light boxes of more family photos with lenticular goddess avatars based on her female ancestors. 'They are based on her great-grandmother, her grandmother, her aunties and her mom, as if they were always there watching over her as she grew up,' said Finn. The work of young Laura Owens, including her first interaction with art via her Keith Haring Swatch watch she sketched in high school, is paired with the Gardena High School Collection. In 1919, John H. Whitely, then principal of the school, encouraged graduating senior classes to acquire works of art as gifts to the campus. That led to an impressive collection of the early works of California artists. Although the acquisition program ended in 1956, Gardena High School alumni in 2013 began a nonprofit for the collection, making it available for public viewing again. The collection is another example of young people's taste in art becoming refined. It is a thread that Leving hopes audiences tug on as they move through the exhibition and understand how they all connect. 'Adolescence is a touchpoint for most everyone and so we can have these shared experiences, even as intergenerational connections,' said Leving. Emily's Sassy Lime represents a different generation of youth subculture than the Lindas Lindas, but both bands have ephemera featured in the show that track their shared DIY spirit and feminist agenda. Founded in Irvine in the 1990s by Emily Ryan, Amy Yao and Wendy Yao, Emily's Sassy Lime played a key role in the early riot grrrl movement. The Linda Lindas, comprised of Bela Salazar, Eloise Wong, and sisters Lucia and Mila de la Garza, follow in those footsteps. Ryan joined the Linda Lindas onstage for the Biennial's block party kick off at OCMA on June 21, which included an appearance from riot grrrl movement pioneer Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. For the Emily's Sassy Lime installation, extensive archiving of the bands posters, photographs, zines, letters and video footage alongside found art and work they were creating themselves has a simple explanation, Ryan explained. 'We come from a long line of hoarders,' said Ryan. 'Immigrants in a lot of ways place importance on certain things and so the way we grew up, anything that caught our eye or had some kind of meaning, it stayed with us.' Styled like a '90s cool girl's bedroom with photos, drawings and CK One ads, the installation is a special type of teenage girl world-building, according to Ryan. 'It's the recreation of that gridded display, made from magazines, fliers, gum wrappers and photos,' Ryan said. The grid display isn't completely unfamiliar to the Young Curators. Instead of reminding them of a teenage bedroom, they liken it to Instagram, perfect rows of photos that convey a meaning or aesthetic. A quote from Britney Spears' Instagram account from 2020 about authenticity accompanies Alison Van Pelt's blurred black and white painting of the pop star, a work all the young curators agreed belonged in their show. 'We really enjoyed the idea that Britney Spears is such a culture icon, that even though she is not active in our generation we still know her and know her story so closely,' said Laura Wagner, one of the young curators. 'Britney Spears is someone that everyone knows and everyone thinks they know very personally, but nobody knows the real Britney.' 'California Biennial 2025: Desperate, Scared, But Social' is on view at the Orange County Museum of Art at 3333 Avenue of the Arts, Costa Mesa now through Jan. 4, 2026.
Los Angeles Times
16-06-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
UC Irvine in talks to take over Orange County Museum of Art: L.A. arts and culture this week
UC Irvine and Orange County Museum of Art have signed a nonbinding letter of intent, which, if approved by the University of California Board of Regents in the fall, would bring the museum under the university's control, effectively merging it with UC Irvine's Langson Institute and Museum of California Art. The news comes two months after OCMA's CEO, Heidi Zuckerman, announced her intention to step down in December, and a week before the museum launches its 2025 California Biennial, 'Desperate, Scared, But Social,' set to run Saturday though Jan. 4. 'This represents a thoughtful next step in OCMA's evolution,' said OCMA board chair David Emmes in an email. 'Partnering with UC Irvine would offer new opportunities to strengthen our mission, expand educational impact, and position the museum as a lasting and dynamic cultural anchor for the region. We look forward to next steps and the possibilities of this collaboration.' The $93-million, 53,000-square-foot OCMA building, designed by Morphosis, debuted in October 2022 as the crown jewel of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa — a full 35 years after it was announced as an ambitious plan by the small Newport Harbor Art Museum. Its opening drew more than 10,000 visitors in its first 24 hours, and admission for the first decade of operation was made free thanks to the financial largesse of Newport Beach's Lugano Diamonds. Cracks soon began to appear, though, as architectural critics and columnists, including The Times' Carolina Miranda, noted that the pricey building did not seem to be fully finished. OCMA's contemporary collection has a broader scope than UC Irvine's, which focuses on California art, including early 20th century California Impressionism. If the merger happens, UC Irvine would no longer build a planned new museum on its campus and instead fold that effort into OCMA. UC Irvine is in the early stages of searching for a director for its museum, but the parameters of that search are likely to change, too. OCMA has not yet launched its search for Zuckerman's replacement, so the two efforts would probably be combined. No logistics for how that might work are yet available. A merger would add the impressive Buck Collection to OCMA's treasures, which real estate developer Gerald Buck bequeathed to UC Irvine upon his sudden death in 2017. Buck had amassed more than 3,200 paintings, sculptures and works on paper by some of the state's most important artists, including Joan Brown, Jay DeFeo, Richard Diebenkorn, David Hockney and Ed Ruscha. 'OCMA has long contributed to the cultural vibrancy of our region, and UC Irvine is honored to explore this promising partnership,' said UC Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman in an email. 'As a university committed to discovery, creativity, and public service, we see great potential in combining our strengths to expand access to the arts, deepen engagement with California's artistic legacy, and support new generations of creators and scholars.' The Board of Regents will vote on the merger in the fall. In the meantime, both institutions are in the exploratory stages of figuring out how a merger would work. I'm arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt looking to merge with some vacation time this summer. Here's this week's arts roundup. Naked LunchVidiots hosts the local premiere of a new 4K remastering of David Cronenberg's 1991 adaptation of William S. Burrough's quasi-autobiographical novel. 'I'm not trying to do 'Naked Lunch' literally,' Cronenberg told The Times upon the film's release. 'I'm doing something else. I'm writing about writing, so in a way I'm writing about the process of writing 'Naked Lunch.' ' But even that is motivated by something Burroughs says in the book: 'There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing … I am a recording instrument … I am not an entertainer.' The film's star, Peter Weller, will be in attendance, signing his new book, 'Leon Battista Alberti in Exile.'7:30 p.m. Monday. Vidiots, Eagle Theater, 4884 Eagle Rock Blvd. ParadeMichael Arden's triumphant Tony-winning 2023 Broadway revival of Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown's musical drama proved that one of more challenging works in the modern musical repertory is an indisputable classic. This breathtakingly ambitious show tells the story of the 1913 trial of Leo Frank, a gross miscarriage of justice that culminated in his antisemitic lynching. While parsing the social and political context, the musical never loses sight of the protagonist and his wife, finding room for the heartbreaking personal side of an American tragedy that reveals the dark side of our collective past. Tuesday through July 12, Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. Queer LensWith a provocative title that centers queer imagery within established photographic history since the mid-19th century, this exhibition will examine the ways in which the accessibility and immediacy of camerawork have shaped perceptions of LGBTQ+ people. Organized chronologically, 'Queer Lens' spans from 'Homosocial Culture and Romantic Friendships, 1810-1868' to 'The Future is Queer, 2015-2025,' with sections covering language and identity, the gay liberation movement, the AIDS crisis and through Sept. 28. J. Paul Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive, L.A. President Trump made a grand red carpet appearance at the Kennedy Center premiere of 'Les Misérables' on Wednesday. This marked the first time the president has attended a show at the theater since firing its board and installing himself as chairman. With First Lady Melania Trump on his arm, the president took his seat in the president's box. The Washington Post reported that he was greeted by boos before 'cheers and chants of 'U.S.A.!' sought to compete.' The following day, the White House Office of Communications issued a press release titled 'President Trump, First Lady Met with Standing Ovation at Kennedy Center,' which went on to describe 'thunderous applause.' A video in the Post story depicts a different reality. Miami City Ballet is bringing Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake' to the Segerstrom Center for the Arts' Segerstrom Hall for five performances June 20-22. It's a special version of the classic ballet choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky — the former director of Moscow Bolshoi Ballet who left Russia in in 2008 and later became an artist in residence at both American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet. Ratmansky reimagined 'Swan Lake' using historical information and archival documents dating to an 1895 premiere at St. Peterberg's Mariinsky Theatre, choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. That revival, based on an 1877 ballet titled 'The Lake of the Swans,' became the favored version going forward, and Ratmansky has used this historical context to anchor his interpretation, with music played live by Pacific Symphony. Tickets are available at Orange County Museum of Art is throwing a free block party from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday, to celebrate the opening of its 2025 California Biennial, 'Desperate, Scared, But Social.' The event will feature a curator-led tour of the exhibit as well of plenty of food trucks and artist-themed snacks at the museum's cafe Verdant. Guests are also invited to make their own risograph posters and zines and to craft screen printed tote bags and shirts. A concert for the whole family will kick off at 7 p.m. with performances by the Linda Lindas, Seth Bogart & The Punkettes and Brontez Purnell, as well as a reunion by Emily's Sassy Lime. Saatchi Art, an online gallery with two L.A.-based executives, is celebrating its 15th anniversary. CEO Sarah Meller and Director of Sales and Curation Erin Remington have built the platform into an online marketplace that helps launch careers including that of Jackie Amezquita, who started out with Saatchi and last year won the Audience Award at the Hammer's Made in LA Biennial. With curfew exemptions from L.A. City Council, performances resumed Thursday night at the Music Center but audiences were reluctant to return downtown. L.A. Opera said attendance at 'Rigoletto' was 554, roughly 1,000 less than its projected attendance. Center Theatre Group said slightly more than 300 ticket holders showed up for 'Hamlet' at the Mark Taper Forum, which seats 739 and had been at 85% capacity (about 630 seats filled) prior to the introduction of a curfew. A representative said the company heard no reports of problems getting in or out of downtown. — Jessica Gelt Times music writer August Brown interviewed Beach Boys co-founder Al Jardine about Brian Wilson, who died last week at 82. 'I just lost my best friend and mentor. It's not a good feeling, but I'm going to carry on and continue to play our music and perform with the Pet Sounds Band,' Jardine told Brown.
Los Angeles Times
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Huntington Beach man using ‘homeless' moment to spread awareness
Huntington Beach artist Chapman Hamborg is still dealing with the circumstances around his viral Instagram reel in his own unique way. A neighbor called the police on Hamborg as he went on a morning walk around the neighborhood with his infant daughter last month, trying to give his wife Hannah some time to relax. His long hair was in a bun, his clothes were worn and one of his slippers had a hole in it. The neighbor thought Hamborg was homeless. A police officer did come to his home near Sowers Middle School on that Good Friday morning to investigate. 'When he explained what happened, that someone had called the cops on me thinking I was a homeless person then had followed me back to my house, I was shocked,' Hamborg said. 'I couldn't believe it at first. I was trying to laugh it off, I guess, and then he asked for my ID. I came inside, and that's when I started recording the video, when I was looking for my ID and telling my wife what was going on.' Hamborg is still carrying the youngest of his four children in a baby sling in the video, which immediately exploded in popularity. As of Friday, it had nearly two million likes and more than 32,000 comments. Hamborg, 32, is trying to turn the misunderstanding into a positive. He's selling limited edition prints of his original painting, 'Unseen Paths,' with 20% of the proceeds going to support Orange County United Way's homelessness efforts. The prints are available at Hamborg's website, The painting was made before the incident but depicts Hamborg similarly, with two of his children. He explained that the flowers in the background are actually invasive yellow mustard flowers. 'It looks like this beautiful scene, but there's kind of this darker undertone to it, at least to me personally,' he said. 'When this whole experience happened, I thought that painting and those aspects about it are even more true for unhoused families, which I was mistaken for being. The imagery and the meaning behind the painting already lined up, and I wanted to connect it to the story and the conversation that was already happening from the video around people experiencing homelessness.' A mutual friend introduced Hamborg to Becks Heyhoe-Khalil, executive director of Orange County United Way's United to End Homelessness initiative. Hamborg and Heyhoe-Khalil will be guests at an Orange County Museum of Art 'Conversations with Artists' event on June 4 at 4 p.m., hosted by Heidi Zuckerman, OCMA's chief executive and director. No registration is needed. They will also host a special livestream event titled 'Art and Advocacy: A Studio Conversation with Chapman Hamborg,' on June 21 at 9 a.m., from his Hamborg Academy of Art studio in Huntington Beach. 'Chapman's curiosity around homelessness has been something so wonderful to engage with,' Heyhoe-Khalil said. 'Getting to know Chapman and just the beautiful heart that he has and the compassion that he has, the desire to use this for the greater good, it fit beautifully with the mission we have at United to End Homelessness at United Way. It's been a really natural way to collaborate.' According to a 2023 UCI-OC poll, 71% of O.C. residents see homelessness as a 'serious problem,' with affordable housing close behind at 69%. As of March, there were 410 families experiencing homelessness in Orange County registered with its family Coordinated Entry System, Heyhoe-Khalil said. That total included 715 children, with 244 of those under the age of 5. 'They've provided all of their documentation, they've done everything that the homelessness system has asked them to do to help them get connected to housing,' she said. Things are not exactly getting easier for them. Emergency housing vouchers that have been available since 2021 are reportedly set to run out of funding next year. Additionally, President Trump has proposed cuts to federal rental assistance. 'One of the things I love about what Chapman is doing is helping open people's eyes, ask questions and challenging assumptions,' Heyhoe-Khalil said. 'Many of the people who have watched the video online have said, 'You do look like you're homeless.' The flip side of that is that they're walking past people, driving past people every day who don't look like they're experiencing homelessness but who are, and they have no idea.' Hamborg realizes the circumstances around that April morning were complicated, not black and white. He said he thinks he knows the identity of his neighbor who called the police, but he's not exactly sure. He wants to talk to her, not to scold her but partially to thank her for her vigilance. 'She's a neighbor concerned for the safety of the baby and the neighborhood, but also, it's crazy for people who are dealing with homelessness to have to deal with this kind of stuff,' he said. 'What if it was a great parent who is trying to get their baby to sleep but they happen to be unhoused? Why should the cops be called on them? Just because they're experiencing homelessness doesn't mean that the baby is in danger, or that the mom is a bad mom or the dad is a bad dad.' Hamborg said his father instilled in him compassion for the homeless. Now he's using that compassion to try and spark a bigger conversation. In his viral Instagram video, he asked, 'If you saw me would you have thought I was homeless?' About two-thirds of the more than 500,000 poll respondents have voted, 'No.' Of course, his association with the video also has to be considered. A People Magazine article has also heightened his celebrity. 'I went to the grocery store [Monday] and got stopped a few times by people asking if I was the homeless guy,' Hamborg said. 'They were very excited to meet me, which was interesting. It was funny. I'm like, 'Yeah, that's me.' 'I'm just glad that this whole conversation is taking place. It's cool to see fruit come from it already, whether it's me selling paintings and the business growing, and then people having conversations about this important topic.'
The Guardian
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The landscape artist who makes her paint from pearls, crystals and volcanic dust
While in art school in London, Su Yu-Xin calculated that most painters used one of five brands of high-end oil paint, and that each brand produced only about 60 colors. 'That's really scary,' the Slade graduate said. 'It's like all the top chefs in the world shop from the same grocery store.' Determined not to be limited to the colors available on the market, Su began experimenting with making her own paints, many sourced from natural materials she collected herself. A decade later, creating her own pigments has become a central part of her work, and the histories of the materials she uses are part of each painting she creates. In her Los Angeles studio, Su now has at least 200 different pigments made from stones, minerals, shells and earth samples collected from across the American west, as well from locations around the Pacific rim. She grinds these materials into the paints she uses for her luminous, swirling landscapes, images of coastal highways in Taiwan, beaches in California, volcanic eruptions in Washington and simmering hot springs in Japan. The 33-year-old is having her first solo museum show in the US this spring, at the Orange County Museum of Art. On a recent afternoon, Su gave the Guardian a tour of her studio, in a light-filled former furniture factory in LA's arts district, and showed us her meticulously organized shelves of pigment materials. The jars of bright powders, and drawers of rocks, shells and minerals, are also a map of her influences and her adventures, which stretch around the world. There is Taiwanese sulfur, from the town where her father grew up. Azurite from Hunan, China, 'the main blue color for thousands of years used in Chinese paintings', which she contrasted to 'the famous ultramarine blue that's used in medieval western oil painting'. And then there are the more recent stones she has collected, on her trips to historic locations across the American west. Su is interested in materials that come with their own deep histories, and that has led her into an unexpected American subculture, one very different from her art school networks from the UK and Taiwan. In the US, the painter has become a 'rock hound'. Today, Su welcomes visitors to her Los Angeles studio with a brisk 'shoes off, please'. Sunlight streams through high windows on to old wooden floors, and big canvases of works in progress lean up against the walls. Su does not use paint on rectangles: her canvases are uniquely curved, and sometimes propped up against gallery walls on handcrafted stands that look like weathered wood or stones. On a studio wall next to the door, there's a massive landscape of a road winding through caverns along the seacoast. It looks, at first glance, like an image of California's Highway 1, perhaps of a beautiful stretch near Big Sur. But Su explains it's actually an image of the coastline on the opposite side of the Pacific: not the west coast of the US, but the east coast of Taiwan. Su's work is full of these kinds of mirrorings – visual and geographical connections that show the long interplay of trade and culture around the Pacific. Her tall white shelves of pigments and pigment materials are part science laboratory, part work of art in themselves. She has drawers of carefully organized rocks and crystals, and jars of ground pigments labeled with their materials, and where and the year when they were collected. Su's choice to make her own pigments is rooted in her early training in Chinese ink painting in Taiwan. Back then, when students arrived at the studio, 'you take off your shoes, and then grind your ink. And we did that every day fresh,' she said. The ink, made with animal hair glue, would go bad quickly, so it couldn't be used the next day. 'There was this kind of ritual to it.' She sees her use of color as deeply grounded in the geography of her youth – something she did not realize until her time in London, where she trained in western oil painting techniques. 'All my classmates were like, 'Your usage of your palettes is very vibrant,' Su recalled. 'If you live where I grew up, which is subtropical, you don't see so many shadows. The sun is directly hitting the ground. You see vibrant color, in food, in houses and in signage,' she said. 'And I felt that was not just a choice, not just a celebration of the form. It's actually what we see. If you are closer to the equator, you see stronger color. 'I wonder, growing up around the Pacific, if there is a type of geological DNA that's imprinted in the landscape, that people thought was stylization, but it actually wasn't – it was like a pinpoint of where you are.' Here in the American west, in contrast, 'everything's so dry and crisp', she said. '[Georgia] O'Keefe – she painted the mountains so sharp, and that's because there's no water in the air, so you get to see really far.' Su is interested in the geopolitics of color itself, and the ways that the history of geography, trade, government and empire shape the fundamental building blocks of artists' craft. In England, certain famous paint shades are inseparable from the history of empire, like JMW Turner's 'Indian Yellow', made from the urine of cows in India that were only fed mango leaves, or 'Mummy Brown', made from ground-up human remains. In Taiwan, the white paint Su used when she studied Chinese painting was made from powdered Japanese oyster shells. She would learn later that students in mainland China tended to use lead white paint, not the gofun white she always used. 'The Chinese painting in Taiwan has this huge influence by Japan because they colonized us for 50 years,' she said. '[The pigments] are all white, but if you look into the DNA of it, it tells you more than artists want to tell you.' The United States, where Su has lived for two years, is a more challenging place to collect natural painting materials than other countries. In Shanghai, she would simply take her backpack and a trowel to a local park in the evening, and fill it with dirt to make into pigment. But in the US, she said, much of the land is private, and national parks don't allow digging for rocks and minerals. Americans can also be aggressive in protecting their private property. 'So I have to figure out what's the zone that I can do what I do, and not get shot,' Su said. On land that falls under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, 'you're allowed to collect 25 pounds a day in one spot, which is plenty', Su said. But much of her stone harvesting ends up being from a patchwork of privately owned mines across the west, which allow visitors to dig up a small quantity of stones for a flat fee. Most of these mines have websites, and she can set up a visit over email. The mine owners tend to be interesting characters, she said. She met a 70-year-old man who owns a blueberry azurite mine and lives in a cabin he built on his own land. Another mine owner took her and her partner camping up on the remote ridge where his mine is located. He works there many days a year, mining rare minerals by hand. To research where to go, Su has joined gem and mineral enthusiast societies, gone on group expeditions and learned from retired geologists, many of whom have worked for mining companies for decades. She and her partner are usually the only Asian people on these adventures, Su said. But the quirky characters she has met across the west also defy simple stereotypes. The people who stake a claim and own small private mines tend to be college-educated, she said, since it takes a lot of geologic knowledge to understand where to mine. One of the most historically resonant California mines she's visited is the Pala Chief mine near San Diego, which she believes was a source of the California tourmaline that Tiffany & Co sold to China's Empress Dowager Cixi, who amassed a large collection of the gems. Cixi 'believed like Chinese people generally believe that tourmaline, this mineral, has the power of purifying and then getting rid of the bad energy', Su said. The empress, who ruled during the final years of the Qing dynasty, faced huge geopolitical pressures, Su said, and she channeled some of that struggle into an obsessive collection of gems and minerals. Today, it's possible to pay a fee and visit the Pala Chief mine to collect a day's worth of tourmaline and other minerals, which Su has done. She brings a pick and a bucket, and a mine representative accompanies her into the mine. The Pala Chief tourmaline she obtained is of relatively low quality, compared with the rare watermelon tourmaline Tiffany sold to Empress Cixi. But for Su, the San Diego tourmaline still carries the intertwined Pacific history of California mining, the last imperial dynasty of China, and the Chinese belief in the spiritual properties of gems and crystals that she sees as influencing the popularity of crystals in California today. The way that Su works these historically significant pigments into her art is not always literal. The tourmaline did not become, for instance, a portrait of Empress Cixi, or an illustration of the mine itself. Instead, Su ground the Pala Chief tourmaline into powder and used it to paint the ocean on a massive landscape of the California coastline called Bone Caves. It's a soothing image of waves and bone-like shells, with the Pacific Ocean as the connector between so many different eras and empires. The white pigment in the painting, she said, is made from bleached coral, 'the coral skeletons created through global warming'. Other times, though, Su makes more straightforward connections. A recent painting of an ongoing underground fire in a Utah coal seam uses paint made from coal, sulfur and also from cinnabar, another 'toxic fiery material' that people in imperial China had used to create a medicine they hoped would make them immortal, but that instead poisoned them. Su has also repeatedly painted Mount Saint Helens, an active volcano in the Pacific north-west. One of the pigments that she uses is helenite, pieces of green glass made by humans from the volcanic dust from Mount Saint Helens' eruptions. Helenite, first created by accident, has become a popular material for jewellery and souvenirs. Su buys bags of it and grinds it up. 'I love this commodification,' she said. 'Because if you look at it under a microscope, it's glass. But through marketing and different crystallization formation, it became something much more valuable. And now it's powder again.' Some of her materials are soft enough to be ground and mixed by hand in the studio. Others require the use of a big, noisy machine, the kind used to grind materials for ceramic glazes. The transformation from raw rock to paint often requires many steps. Dirt has to be sifted out and and the material purified. A chunk of Chinese azurite, for instance, has greens, blues and yellows mixed together, which Su first has to carefully separate out. One of her favorite natural materials from California is mica. 'After you grind it, it becomes a shimmer that people use in eyeshadow. There's something very gentle about it. If you're applying makeup, or you're coloring things, it's an act of care, and making things better. And the mica itself is also so flaky – it's not aggressive.' But she also often paints with sulfur, a pigment with a more dangerous edge. 'It's one of the brightest natural yellows that I can get, so I love using it,' Su said of the flammable material that reeks of rotten eggs. 'And every time I use it, it's like the studio smells so funny. The painting smells so funny. And it's kind of combustible, too.' Su has ground up pearls to make white paint, and even used diamond powder, the kind sold to polish metal. The diamond powder is probably 'the most expensive' material she has used: a few grams cost about $50, though she also uses silver and copper. Her pigment collection includes a meteorite that her friend gave her, and pale pigments made from cowrie shells, which were once used as currency. On her travels, Su has made it through customs in the airports with some very weird materials in her bag. One of the strangest in recent memories is a collection of plastic water bottles filled with mineral-infused water from the different Japanese baths she visited. However, her most precious pigments are not the most expensive ones, but the most difficult to obtain, like the sequence of pastel colors ground from shells she picked up on the beach in Taiwan – shells that she has realized are becoming increasingly rare. Other paint sources have more playful histories: one of her favorite sources of California dirt for earth-based pigments is on the San Andreas fault near Palm Springs, close to where one of the Star Wars movies was filmed. Su used this earth to demonstrate how she makes her paints, pouring out the cleaned and purified California dirt on to the glass-topped cart she uses to mix her pigments, then adding in walnut oil. 'You add the oil in gradually – look, the color just became much more intense,' she said, grinding the powder and the oil together. 'You have to have oil wrap around every single particle so the painting will age well.' Using natural materials as pigments can create issues for a painting over time, Su says. Colors can fade, or even change, from exposure to sunlight or from oxidation. But unlike the artists who see their work as a way to preserve images of youth and beauty from inevitable decay, Su is curious, even open, to the ways the environment may affect her paintings over time. 'When I think what happens to paintings nowadays – you don't know, 300 years later, what's in the air,' she said. 'It's really interesting: climate change and paint. What will happen there?' 'I don't know why I like that,' she said. 'It's something bigger than you, you know?' The Guardian receives support for visual climate coverage from the Outrider Foundation. The Guardian's coverage is editorially independent.
