This time-lapse film about an English parish church visualizes the structure’s construction, gradual demolition, and expansion from 1175 to 1475. Created with Dr. Cathy Oakes while I was an undergraduate studying art history at the University of Oxford. VIEW PUBLICATION >
Amiens Cathedral is a key subject in the Art Humanities Core Curriculum class that is required of all undergraduates at Columbia University. This research project is now used in the classroom instruction of 1,400 Columbia undergrads each year. This project created with Stephen Murray uses computer models and films to visualize the centuries-long time-lapse construction sequence of Amiens Cathedral. This research highlights the cathedral’s role in medieval society: as symbol of civic identity, as economic engine, and as nation-building tool for the future French state.
As published by Columbia University Core Curriculum program. Visit: projects.mcah.columbia.edu/amiens-arthum VIEW PUBLICATION >
As Newark celebrated the 350th anniversary of its 1666 founding, I created this series of time-lapse drawings based on historical images and maps. As Newark develops from a small town to a bustling and industrial metropolis, the sounds of my animation shift from quiet woodlands to the din of the vibrant city with rising skyscrapers. This two-minute film aims to represent history as a living, fluid process. VIEW PUBLICATION >
This time-lapse of Manhattan Chinatown took sixty hours to complete and measures 26 by 40 inches. The artwork features Chinatown’s tenements in the foreground, with Lower Manhattan’s skyscrapers towering above.
Drawing is shared online in lower resolution. Email me for the full-size file. Custom size prints will be mailed to your home address on request. VIEW PUBLICATION >
This exhibit created for the Newark Public Library uses postcard comparisons of past vs. present to showcase Newark’s architectural evolution from 1916 to today. The project highlights the loss of cultural heritage due to urban renewal and demographic change. The resulting interactive map presents 150 comparative views, which illustrate the progressive loss of human-scale small structures that were central to the city’s vanished neighborhood identity. VIEW PUBLICATION >
A wind-up music box featuring Jane’s Carousel along the Brooklyn Waterfront. When closed, the antique cigar box measures a mere 7 by 7 inches and 3 inches deep (18 x 18 x 8 cm). When opened, the Brooklyn Bridge and historic Jane’s Carousel fold out. The carousel spins to the tune of the music while the moon slides across the night sky. VIEW PUBLICATION >
This project features a portfolio gallery of my drawings, watercolors, paintings, and photographs of Manhattan island. The portfolio is divided into ten “walks” over the chapter structure of ten “days.” Each “day” features some of my artwork about a different neighborhood of Manhattan: Chinatown, SoHo, East Village, West Village, the High Line, Madison Square, Midtown, Central Park, Riverside Drive, Morningside Heights, Harlem, and Washington Heights. VIEW PUBLICATION >
Murphy Varnish, built in 1886, is one of Newark’s oldest factories still standing. Its brick walls, terracotta ornament, and intricate brickwork reflect a time when industrial structures were more than just functional. Murphy Varnish reflects a time when industry was central to Newark’s wealth and key to its future success. It is a monument to industry, built to last. Recent renovation efforts promise to turn this derelict structure into a community of apartments. VIEW PUBLICATION >
Vanishing City is a visual documentary and photo essay about architecture and redevelopment in Newark. An abandoned barge sinks in murky waters. A former factory tumbles before the wrecking ball. A sea of weeds lays siege to a vacant home. An empty lot is a gaping hole, a missing tooth, in the urban body. As a wall crumbles to the ground, a tree, anchored to the wall, reaches for the sky. VIEW PUBLICATION >
I spent much of the past few years painting and photographing my changing city. This short film features a selection of my work, complemented by classical music. Five of Modest Mussorgsky’s pieces from his composition Pictures at an Exhibition are selected, each of which represents the feel of a certain part of Newark. VIEW PUBLICATION >
Mount Pleasant was the resting place of Newark’s leading industrialists, politicians, and first families. Opened in 1844 and landmarked in 1988, it fell into neglect as Newark’s wealth flowed away to foreign factories and Newark’s people fled to suburbia. Memories and histories carved in the text of century-old tombstones erode away as slowly as murky waters flow past in the nearby Passaic River. VIEW PUBLICATION >
Growing up in Newark, I was inspired and saddened by my inner-city environment: I am inspired by Newark’s hope of renewal after decades of white flight, under-investment, and urban neglect. I am saddened by the loss of my city’s historic architecture and urban fabric to the wrecking ball of ostensible progress. My photo and art series titled Renaissance City depicts the Newark of my childhood with garish signage and decayed structures blanketing the city in a medley of color and consumerism. VIEW PUBLICATION >
By Myles and Maia Zhang
Our family’s reflection and photo essay on the annual tradition we have of planting flowers in a vacant lot.
“In time, we will wind our way and rediscover the role of architecture and man-made forms in creating a new civilized landscape. It is essentially a question of rediscovering symbols and believing in them once again. […] Out of a ruin a new symbol emerges, and a landscape finds form and comes alive.”
– John Brinckerhoff Jackson VIEW PUBLICATION >
In the summer of 2014, I built a model of New York City containing many of the city’s landmarks, skyscrapers, and a flock of subway cars. This creation measures a mere 28 by 36 inches (70 x 90 cm) and is made of wood, paper, and plastic. VIEW PUBLICATION >
Dedicated to Professor of Economics Brendan O’Flaherty for helping me apply to Columbia as an undergraduate.
The following video lecture contains paintings and photos I compiled while walking in New York. VIEW PUBLICATION >
Despite the seeming differences between them, many utopias and dystopias often resemble the panopticon, a model of the ideal surveillance state. In fact, panopticon, dystopic police state, and utopian society share common goals: total observation, total power, and unquestioned control. VIEW PUBLICATION >
I constructed this model to remember the six formative years I spent at The Hudson School in Hoboken, NJ. The model is made of paper folded like origami sheets. Each building is made from a single piece of paper that is colored with ink, painted, cut-out, folded, and then glued together. The trees are made from telephone wire bundled and twisted together to resemble branches. VIEW PUBLICATION >
Excerpt from the Common App essay I wrote in 2015. This essay on the experience and love of walking accompanied my successful undergraduate application to Columbia University. VIEW PUBLICATION >
In this visual essay of drawings, paintings, and photos I explore my walks in Manhattan Chinatown. Chinatown is both static and dynamic: Static in its resilience against gentrification, dynamic in its cultural interplay between past and present, immigrant and American. VIEW PUBLICATION >
This series explores movement. These sculptures made of paper, wire, and wood are powered by the wind. When placed before a light breeze, the pinwheels spin and power the sculptures’ cyclical movements. The bird will soar. The horseman will charge forward, lance at the ready. Each sculpture evokes the theme of movement. VIEW PUBLICATION >
From left to right: clock tower at Newark Broad Street Station, backyard of my childhood home, imaginary factory scene at night
Growing up in struggling, inner city Newark, the gritty urban environment inspired me. Newark’s abandoned factories and rust belt industries are fuel for my imagination and inspiration for me to reflect on the passage of time through my art.
Space House is inspired from images of 1950s futurism and from architect Buckminster Fuller’s proposal for the ideal, modern home, the Dymaxion House. This circular model made of paper is three floors tall and fifteen inches in diameter. The house is painted silver, circular, and domed to evoke the streamlined images of 1950s American cars. VIEW PUBLICATION >
A visual essay of my photos and watercolor paintings. Work examines the themes of industrialization, decay, and mass production in the consumer landscape of warehouses and shipping docks at Port Newark. VIEW PUBLICATION >
Excerpt from the Common App essay I wrote in 2015. This essay on my childhood experiences and struggles of growing up in the majority-black, inner city of Newark, NJ accompanied my successful undergraduate application to Columbia University. VIEW PUBLICATION >
A visual essay of artwork and photos from my experience of walking in the South Bronx.
Strolling in the Bronx, I am arrested by the inner-city grid that stretches mile after mile. Block after block, street after street, a never ending treadmill of bodegas, tenements, hair salons, C-TOWN supermarkets, strip malls, and laundries. In the treadmill of the city grid, I become an explorer lost wandering. I retrace my footsteps. VIEW PUBLICATION >
As featured by NJ.com in spring 2019 Update: Following a case filed by New Jersey Appleseed Public Interest Law Center on behalf of PLANewark, Edison Parking admitted that they demolished this building without seeking proper permission from city and state agencies. Edison was in negotations out of court with PLANewark about ways to mitigate the damage they caused. On a warm Sunday in August 2014, bulldozers started tearing away at a historic, turn-of-the-century loft space. Although the first floor was sealed with cinder blocks, the upper floor was adorned with large Chicago-style windows, intricate white terracotta carvings, and Greco-Roman ornament…. VIEW PUBLICATION >
A photo essay and artist’s statement about the geography of decline and landscape of abandonment in contemporary Detroit. VIEW PUBLICATION >
These drawings are my imaginary reflection on water, ships, and the machinery related to water. The stylized smoke, waves, and night sky are inspired by Japanese woodcuts and Art Deco architecture. VIEW PUBLICATION >
A visual essay featuring some of my watercolors, pastel images, and ink line drawings of the New Jersey Meadowlands. These images – both real and imagined – were inspired by industrial scenes I saw outside the train window when commuting between home in Newark and school in Hoboken, NJ. VIEW PUBLICATION >
