{"id":225329,"date":"2026-03-18T14:22:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T14:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/225329\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T14:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T14:22:16","slug":"video-observer-fullerton-college-2026-artist-in-residence-phung-huynh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/225329\/","title":{"rendered":"Video Observer: Fullerton College 2026 Artist-in-Residence\u00a0Phung Huynh"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fullerton College has one of the few community college art departments in the country that offers an Artist-in-Residence (AiR) program. After talking with Seija Rohkea, Art Gallery Technician at the College, I learned that the gallery was welcoming Los Angeles-based multimedia artist and educator Phung Huynh to the campus this March to take part in the department\u2019s annual, four-day residency.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Huynh brought with her graphite sticks, colored pencils, and oil paints, among many other materials, to share her artistic practice with a classroom full of students. She closed out her residency with an over-hour-long artist talk to the college community, followed by a gallery walkthrough of her solo exhibition.\u00a0 During the week, I had a chance to interview\u00a0 Rohkea about the history of the Fullerton College Artist-in-Residence Program, and between classes, Huynh\u00a0 talked with me about her experiences as a refugee, as an artist and as an educator.<\/p>\n

Jumping back in time to 1972, when Fullerton College\u2019s Artist-in-Residence program began, I learned from Rohkea that California-based artist Wayne Thiebaud was the first to launch this week-long program, which soon became an annual tradition for the campus\u2019s Art Department.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Rohkea\u00a0said,\u00a0\u201cOur catalog mentions the beginning of the AiR program starting in 1972, with the community services sponsoring the first AiR program with Thiebaud.\u00a0The AiR program\u2019s beginnings, however,\u00a0stem back to 1965 with the help of Ferdinand Roten Gallery, which helped to conduct print sales on our campus. This annual event culminated in the Artist-in-Residence program just seven years later.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the most notable artists to come through\u00a0Fullerton College\u2019s\u00a0 Artist Residency Program prior to Phung Huynh include Miriam Schapiro, Frank Romero, Pavel Acevedo, Chris Sickles, Lisa Congdon, April Bey, Gronk Nicandro,\u00a0and\u00a0 Thomas Campbell.<\/p>\n

\u201cArtists are selected through a committee. Faculty members propose artists and the committee decides, then emails the artists for availability, starting with the first choice,\u201d said\u00a0 Rohkea.\u00a0\u201cWe specifically look for national and international artists who represent a whole range of styles, themes and issues in their work and can teach their practice to our students for a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Rohkea explained that this annual four-day residency includes a series of studio demonstrations, an evening slideshow lecture, and an exhibition of the artist\u2019s work to be displayed in the college\u2019s art gallery for five weeks, with an opening reception that brings the Fullerton community together.<\/p>\n

For Huynh\u2019s exhibition, titled \u201cLife in Many Worlds,\u201d the space was used to explore Huynh\u2019s cultural experiences as a refugee.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cThe work is about\u00a0the refugee experience, it\u2019s about\u00a0displacement due to U.S. imperialism,\u201d said Huynh.\u00a0\u201cMy family and I spent eight months in a refugee camp in Thailand.\u00a0 I\u2019m a multiethnic South East Asian with a cultural identity that\u2019s Cambodian, Chinese, and Vietnamese. My mother\u2019s parents left Southern China during the Japanese occupation of World War II and sought refuge in Vietnam, where my mother and I were both born.\u00a0My father is Cambodian and left Cambodia because of civil war, genocide,\u00a0and\u2026 brutal dictatorship; he bicycled to the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, and briefly remade a life in Vietnam. Within three years, my father met and married my mother, had me, and brought our immediate and extended families to a Thai refugee camp by pretending to be a fisherman and hiding forty-one family members under the boat stack. We eventually resettled in Michigan in December of 1978, and then moved to Los Angeles in 1981.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huynh\u2019s exhibition at the Fullerton College Art Gallery includes oversized banners depicting decaying Khmer Buddha statues, among mixed media illustrations, paintings, screen prints and pieces made throughout Huynh\u2019s artistic journey. The gallery hosted an opening reception for Huynh\u2019s exhibit on February 19 that included\u00a0 performances by a Long Beach-based Cambodian dance company, which, according to The Hornet, \u201cblessed the space with \u2018Rombam Jun Por,\u2019 a dance traditionally performed to welcome and bestow good fortune to guests, and \u2018Preah Thong and Neang Neak,\u2019 a dance depicting the mythical origin of Cambodia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>One art professor who attended the exhibit\u2019s opening said to me, \u201cI\u2019ve long admired Phung\u2019s work, so it\u2019s especially exciting to see it here and have the students experience it up close. Her work brings out a powerful way that merges the past and the present together. The ceremonial opening was such a thoughtful addition to the reception. It was welcoming and intentional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arriving early on Monday morning at the start of Huynh\u2019s residency, I walked upstairs in the historic 1000 Building of Fullerton College and visited the drawing and painting classroom where she was setting up for the first class of the day. From day one to day four of her residency, Phung posed an interesting question to the students, asking them to contemplate and consider what kinds of food they would take with them if they suddenly found themselves displaced from their family and country of origin. She encouraged each student to either write about or draw the food they would carry with them within the 2D outlines of an empty container.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Students pondered this question of displacement and borrowed colored pencils from the front of the classroom to start drawing. During the first week in March, students filled an entire classroom wall of empty cans with colored pencil and graphite drawings of shu mai, coffee, frijoles, mole, peaches, pan dulce, pozole, tamales, collards, yams, grapes, strawberries,\u00a0 tacos, and musaf, among many diverse food offerings. Different classes came through the room at different times, but each student left their own unique impression on the corkboard wall with the label \u201cDisplaced\u201d on it.<\/p>\n

When asked how her teaching experience influences her art, Huynh said, \u201cTeaching has really influenced my work because it forces me to think about the future, and I feel like change takes many generations\u2026 My grandfather has always said, \u2018When I think about what I do, I think about seven generations after me.\u2019 And so, thinking about the future, thinking about emerging artists, thinking about my role as a mom (\u2019cause they always call me their \u2018art mom\u2019) has built community. I feel like teaching has made me more of a community artist and seeing more of the\u00a0impact, rather than just making work and\u00a0showing it, but seeing direct relationships, direct connections\u2026 It moves me so much that every part of this process has been with\u00a0the\u00a0students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huynh\u2019s exhibition, \u201cLife in Many Worlds,\u201d remains on view inside the Fullerton College Art Gallery, located in Room 1004 on the community college campus,\u00a0until March 25.\u00a0The Gallery is open Monday to Thursday from 10am to 12pm and 2pm to 4pm. Admission is always free\u00a0and open to the public.<\/p>\n

To view\u00a0a\u00a0list of\u00a0exhibitions from\u00a0previous\u00a0artists in residence at Fullerton College, visit:\u00a0https:\/\/art.fullcoll.edu\/event_artistinresidence.php<\/a><\/p>\n

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