Running a successful event, big or small requires planning, organization, and a bit of luck. While throwing a bachelor party or birthday celebration would only require a few criteria – alcohol and good friends included – to ensure no variables, organizing an event that caters to the thousands for an international audience is a different story completely. Putting together an art or music festival may have been a hopeless idea some 10 years ago, yet with the aid of the internet and a network of like-minded peers, any idea that would have been deemed farfetched can come to fruition. We caught up with founder of art, culture and music festival POW! WOW!’s Jasper Wong — who recently expanded his artistic forays to Taipei following successful events in Hong Kong and Hawaii – for some firsthand advice on how to run an event successfully. Read below for some wisdom from the Honolulu-based curator and artist and head to POW! WOW! for more on the art-driven mainstay.
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POW! WOW! Hawaii 2015 festival is well and truly over, but the work doesn’t stop for Jasper Wong – artist, illustrator and creator of the annual event. Founder of various galleries around the world, including Above Second in Hong Kong, Loft in Space in Honolulu, and the city’s community arts center Lana Lane Studios, Jasper lives and breathes art. We followed him around for a day during POW! WOW! Hawaii 2015, going behind-the-scenes at the street art festival, and getting a firsthand look at what goes into the event.
This is an interview conducted and written by Jasper Wong:
To describe James Jean would be difficult. The visual artist has had the distinguished role of creating art through numerous fabrics of culture. Following his graduation from New York City’s School of Visual Art, Jean wasted no time in making his mark through the world of comics. Holding down a role at DC Comics was a springboard to being the visual lead behind Bill Willingham’s well-received Fables series. Throughout his comic book career, Jean has been on the receiving end of countless Eisner Awards, celebrating the very best in the comic book industry. Yet his scope and influence has extended far beyond that into the realm of popular culture with high-profile clients representing a veritable who’s who of publications and brands such as Prada, Philip Lim, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, ESPN, Atlantic Records, Target and Playboy.
Despite all this success through illustration, it was never the plan for Jean. The goal of becoming a painter was unfortunately side-tracked as illustrating became a powerful and lucrative draw. Almost a decade later, many fans are having trouble accepting Jean’s abandonment of the pen in favor of the paintbrush. Fellow artist Jasper Wong has an engaging back and forth about Jean’s roots, his relationship with David Choe, and finally his desire to focus solely on paintings.
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This is an interview conducted and written by Jasper Wong:
The tools used to create art are just as essential as the art itself. Born from experimentation and a need for a tool that was ideal for the streets, KRINK revolutionized ink. Artists from all over the world regard it for its high quality as much as what it represents to the culture. Continuing the constant need to take it to the next level, KRINK recently expanded to the digital realm with the KRINK app that takes ink into the world of pixels. It all started with some household items, ink, and a need to write.
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Every year on Valentine’s weekend, the art world descends upon Honolulu, Hawaii for POW! WOW! – a week-long art and music initiative founded by Hawaiian artist Jasper Wong. Inspired by art as a means of expression, POW! WOW! continues to grow exponentially, bringing together acclaimed artists both international and local under Jasper’s curation. Outside of POW! WOW!, Jasper’s artistic foray is seen via unique paintings that fuse together Asian pop influences with street art sensibilities, while his commitment to outreach is furthered via exhibitions and youth projects taking place in a creative venue he founded, LOFT IN SPACE. We previously caught up with Jasper on our Essentials feature, where he showed off tools needed for his illustration, placed humorously alongside his baby daughter Ella. In this episode, we look at the on-the-go apps needed to assist Jasper in his dynamic lifestyle. Aside from the usual social media channels, Jasper looks to Duolingo as a way to accomplish his New Year’s resolution to pick up a new language, Smash Hit to train his hand eye coordination, Endless Reader for its ability to provide fun and educational cues for his daughter, and 1AM to help locate exciting murals during his travel. Cast your eyes over his Tech Essentials and stay tuned for the next chapter of POW! WOW!, making its debut this year in Taipei.
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The “process.” This has long been an important notion for artist, curator, POW! WOW! founder and father, Jasper Wong. Having grown up in Hawaii amongst a healthy diet of cartoons, he eventually left the confines of home to attend art school in San Francisco. Looking further for a greater challenge, Jasper eventually made the move to Hong Kong for a change of pace and a new series of challenges. One of his most remarkable efforts was the foundation of POW WOW, an art-based creative event that championed the ability for the public to witness artists in action. As the inaugural event in Hong Kong got the ball rolling for bringing art to an otherwise deprived region at the time, Jasper would eventually return back to his hometown of Honolulu to continue on with his endeavors. After yet another successful POW WOW campaign in 2013, we had the chance to explore the Essentials of the new father which teeters heavily on the art supply side of things — makes sense given his designation as one of Archive magazine’s 200 Best Illustrators Worldwide — with of course an influx of new and much more pertinent supplies for his daughter, Ella.
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