This Side of Blue focuses overdue attention on artist Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022). A Chinese American artist who immigrated to California in 1965, Ting often interwove Eastern and Western aesthetics in her work. Ting's dynamic paintings, which range from figurative works to abstract compositions, explore themes including immigration, womanhood, place and belonging.
Curated by Holly Shen, This Side of Blue places Ting's art within the context of the Bay Area of the 1970s-1990s, when a cross-cultural community of artists were drawing inspiration from both the contemporary art scene and their own diasporic ethnicities.
Born in Shanghai in 1946, Ting spent much of her childhood in Hong Kong after her family fled communist takeover in China. She immigrated to the Bay Area to attend San Francisco Women's College (now USF), eventually transferring to San Jose State University where she received a B.A. in studio art in 1969, followed by an M.A. in painting in 1976. Ting lived and worked in San Jose for the early part of her career, where she married and raised two children, and taught at institutions including San Jose State University and the University of California Berkeley Extension. She later moved to Sausalito, and additionally worked in Taos, New Mexico for part of each year after establishing a small studio there.
This Side of Blue centers on Ting's paintings, highlighting her interest in a matrix of connected genres and influences including figurative painting, abstraction, landscape, and a lifelong engagement with movement—from ballet, to Butoh, to modern dance and performance art.
This Side of Blue is on view at University Art Gallery, located on the Sonoma State campus in the Art Building complex, adjacent to Parking Lot A. The Gallery is open Tuesdays - Fridays 11 - 4:00, and weekends 12 - 4:00.
This Side of Blue is organized in collaboration with the Estate of Mimi Chen Ting and Artist Estate Studio, LLC, and supported in part by Louis Stern Fine Arts, Los Angeles.
For the press release for This Side of Blue, click here.