The Living Line: Alan Lau and Juliet Shen. Opening September 21st

Artist Reception: September 27, 2025. 1:00-3:00 pm. Light refreshments will be served.

Jade Choe Gallery Hours:

Monday - Wednesday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.

Thursday - Saturday 9:00 am to 7:00 pm

Exhibition dates:

• September 21st to October 11th

• October 20th to October 31st

Seattle Chinese American artists Alan Lau and Juliet Shen share a lyrical conversation in brush and ink, each expressing a unique vision. Lau’s abstract compositions speak in poetic gestures of space, while Shen evokes the spirit of the forest through her towering vertical scrolls. Rooted in the traditions of ink and brush yet wholly contemporary, their works feel fresh, vibrant, and deeply captivating.

JULIET SHEN

Statement

These large landscape scrolls show trees who have the past, the present and the future embedded in them. Decay and renewal coexist, a living metaphor of the human condition. My art shares with traditional Chinese landscapes a reverence for nature that is tied to the belief that the human heart is reflected there. The scrolls are drawn with Chinese brushes and ink on rolls of handmade Japanese paper, where every brushstroke leaves an indelible mark—much like our actions in the world.

Biography

Juliet Shen was born in New York. She attended Sarah Lawrence College, Cooper Union, and the University of Reading, UK, where she earned a Masters in Typeface Design. Shen has resided in Seattle since 1983, where she owned an independent design firm and taught typography at Cornish College and the School of Visual Concepts. In 2012 she retired from design and returned to painting full time, an occupation that she has embraced since childhood. Since then she has exhibited in numerous galleries, and at Asian Pacific Cultural Center, Tacoma Art Museum, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Vashon Center for the Arts, Museum of Northwest Art, and Schack Art Center.

---

ALAN LAU

Courtesy of ArtX Contemporary

https://artxcontemporary.com/

Statement

Alan Lau’s style is rooted in the Chinese Literati tradition and Northwest modernism. The Chinese calligraphy he learned from his grandmother as a child and the patterned abstractions he did in art school in the 1960s inform his work, as does the traditional brush and sumi-e painting he studied during the 1970s at the Nanga School in Kyoto, Japan with mentor Nirakushi Toriumi. Lau’s work is rooted in traditions yet fused with contemporary style and free in his own interpretations.

Biography

Artist, poet, and community organizer Alan Lau grew up in Paradise, California. In his first book, The Buddha Bandits Down Highway 99, Lau recalls early memories of his grandmother teaching him calligraphy in her kitchen – his first experience with the brush. After traveling to Japan to study sumi-e and nanga brush painting under Toriumi Nirakushi, Lau attended the University of California – Santa Cruz, receiving his BA in Art in 1976. By the late 1980s, Lau had settled in Seattle and developed his visual style rooted in the Chinese Literati tradition and Northwest modernism; inspired by traditional brush painting techniques, but unfettered by strict tradition. Lau primarily works on delicate Japanese rice paper, layering sumi ink, watercolor, pastel, and other media to create abstract works with great depth yet surprising lightness. Lau's visual artwork has been exhibited since the 1970s at numerous venues including Francine Seders Gallery, ArtXchange Gallery, and an extensive list of regional and international museums and collections. In 2014, Lau was awarded the Mayor's Arts Award by the City of Seattle and was the recipient of a major award by the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation in 2015.