About | Mysite

About Jenna

My story began in 1997, in a hot summer.

I was born into a large family in mainland China and spent 13 years there before I immigrated to Marin County, a small county in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was immediately drawn to the differences of the arts and cultures in this picturesque place because it is so different from China. I began to study and research art and history since them. I knew I want to work towards a career in one of these fields.

I am currently studying Art Practice and History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. For me, art is conservations. It is conservations within myself, with other peoples, and among other people. Art making for me is an attempt to understand myself: How I think? What do I think? Why do I think so? And so on. In the past few years, I had been exploring the duality within myself and hoping to manage this hybridity to a comfortable level.

Because of my past experiences, I now live in two different worlds at the same time. So far, I spent half of my life in China and half of my life in the U.S.A. By experiencing different histories, cultures, languages, political opinions, aesthetic values, etc, I find my thinkings and feelings contradicted and unresolvable.

I began to take art courses with teachers from both China and America. Although the definition of art now become broader and opener, different cultures still have different art norms and values. Through studies in the past years, I developed two distinctive painting styles. One is more neo-classical and academic, which is more appreciated by Chinese schools. The other one is more modern and animated, which is more popular in the West. As I kept explore in the art world, these two styles seem only grow apart from each other. I also see myself splitting into two pieces and could not find a way to sew myself back together.

I became interested in the history of arts. I read Giorgio Vasari and JJ Winckelmann; studied Carol Duncan and James Elkins. It is easy to know when Chinese arts become westernized and why art in America became so abstract, but it does not answer my question. I still could not find a perfect way to unify myself and my arts.

Today, I am still making art and having conservation. Maybe one day I will come to a conclusion of all the questions I have now. Maybe I will never find them out. What is important is to keep communicating, keep exploring, and keep the journey going.

I am still making art and learning conservation.