Back in the late 90s my wife Joyce donated some of her mom’s cheong sam dresses to the Oakland Museum of California. OMCA has curated an extensive collection of clothing.

This year, Bay Area artist Chelsea Ryoko Wong selected some of the dresses in the collection for an installation called Ancestral Visions. She focuses on the lives of Chinese American women. Along with the dresses she selected, she created paintings depicting the everyday lives of Chinese Americans.

We were recently invited by OMCA Senior Curator of Art Carin Adams to visit the exhibit. Chelsea’s vibrant paintings, shown alongside selected dresses from a historical collection, celebrate the everyday lives of Chinese American women. The figures are simplified and flat, with solid blocks of color and patterned clothing, and the architecture is geometric and decorative.

As an artist, I was deeply moved by her bold colors, playful details, and how each scene felt like a window into a lived moment. Her work reminded me that ordinary life is rich with story and beauty. I left feeling inspired to notice more, and maybe to paint more, too.

Here is more info in SF Chronicle’s Datebook.