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Meet the Artists

Horatio Hung-Yan Law

horatio

When Personal Meets Global

— PNCA faculty —

Large-scale photographic portraits carefully rendered in candy. 800 gilded plastic rice bowls. Religious figurines painstakingly covered with rice kernels, glued on their ends. Horatio Hung-Yan Law applies unique materials to his unique vision, taking on subjects from Chinese-American history to AIDS.

“Call it a blessing in disguise: I have a problem with pinning down my own medium,” Law says. “I started out as a printmaker, and then I branched out into photography, then digital material, and then I started doing installations also, and eventually it was a combination of all of it.” His mixed-media works have garnered him numerous awards, fellowships, and high praise from critics in Artweek and other publications. He is represented by the Elizabeth Leach Gallery, and teaches printmaking, photography, and foundation classes at PNCA.

Born in Hong Kong, at age 16 Law immigrated with his family to New York City, where he stayed through high school. He then moved to Baltimore to study pre-med. “Molecular biology was the rage at Johns Hopkins, and I was just so bored,” he says with a laugh. “I could not connect with that at all, but I was obligated to finish it.” He returned to New York and got a research job at Columbia University, where he could take classes for free.

“When I took my first painting class, it was like a light bulb turned on. I wasnÕt sure what was happening, I just knew it was important, so I kept taking art classes, and soon I was doing like three art classes at night and doing a full-time job, helping out my family business in Chinatown.” He quit the day job and went on to earn his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, a printmaking diploma from Il Bisonte International School of Graphic Arts in Italy, and his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis.

A residency brought Law to Portland in 1994; he then taught briefly at the University of Oregon and considered a move to the Bay Area, but found it a difficult place for artists. “I love Portland. I think it’s the kind of city that is very open to young artists, and a city that really cares about its citizens,“ he says. “It’s easier to survive here. It has the amenities of a big city but also it doesn’t have the grittiness…it’s a nice combination of things.”

His current work involves Chinese children adopted by American parents. Establishing relationships with these growing children and their families has removed the veil of objectivity he tried to place between himself and his subjects when delving into Chinese history in Eastern Oregon and similar subjects.

“It’s a different way of thinking,” he acknowledges. Yet in all artistic undertakings, “you cannot be totally objective because what drives the artist is a passion about things. Without that passion, that drive, it would just be boring work, it wouldn’t be interesting work. You have to take a stand, but how you react to people or ideas that are different than yours is where the interesting things lie.”

Law encourages students to explore the interesting and the global from a personal perspective. “For students to learn to tackle these issues, they have to first know about themselves,” he elaborates. “I will try to expose them to issues, but I also want to make sure they’re coming from an authentic center. That means they have to really know who they are first before they can take a stand on an issue or look at an issue with discerning eyes and intellect.”

Law will soon take a year off from teaching in order to pursue a Regional Arts & Culture Council grant; he will be the artist-in-residence for the Intersections program. After that, he looks forward to resuming teaching. “It always surprises me how good some of the students are,” he says. “I like seeing them grow from freshmen to seniors here. It’s like seeing the blossom open.”

photo credit: Barrett Rudich, written by Tiffany Lee Brown