The Linda A. Day Endowed Student Award
Tidawhitney Lek
2014 Linda A. Day Endowed Student Award Recipient
Tidawhitney Lek was born and raised in Cambodia Town in the city of Long Beach, California. She graduated with a BFA in Drawing and Painting from Cal State University of Long Beach in 2017. Since her time there she’s earned a number of scholarships (Linda A. Day Scholarship 2014, Fine Arts Affiliates Scholarship 2015, ASI Scholarship 2016, and Richard and Johanna Baker Endowed Scholarship 2016) and two significant nominations (Yale Norfolk Scholarship in 2014 and 2016). She became a member of the FA4 Collective in 2014, a forum of CSULB alumni collaborating projects throughout the Greater Los Angeles area, and now works in her studio in the downtown area of the city. Selected group shows include; Mindscape; The Sewing Circle; All Star (2018). Her work can be viewed on social media via instagram @tidawhitney and a website coming soon.
Artist Statement
My work has grown into a personal narrative about life as a first generation in America and the unspoken tales of the female perception. It confronts the mundane yet unfamiliar surroundings found in everyday instances. The interior and exterior motifs of architecture and landscape dissected and assembled together archetypally by tangencies, ruptures, or breaks. With painting I collage using various methods of photograph and drawings layered between loony and graphic images, buttressed against detail renderings, which then is framed in an atmosphere of contradicting dismay. These scenes resonates with themes of moral up- bringing, a place of contemplation and questioning on one’s view of meanings in the context of memorable times.