Asian American Women Artists Association

Asian American Women Artists Association The leading organization representing Asian American women in the arts for social change. Ensuring the visibility and documentation of our community.

Ensuring the visibility and documentation of Asian American women in the arts. Through exhibitions, publications, and educational programs, we offer thought-provoking perspectives that challenge societal assumptions and promote dialogue.

🙌 Get to know AAWAA's Board of Directors!These incredible women tirelessly oversee our organization's operations and pro...
08/03/2026

🙌 Get to know AAWAA's Board of Directors!

These incredible women tirelessly oversee our organization's operations and programming:

Angela Han (top row, left) - The President who oversees AAWAA’s strategic planning and ex*****on, in alignment with our organization’s mission and current culture of Self-Care, Support, and Sustainability.

Leah Froyd (top row, right) - The Secretary and Development Lead who oversees AAWAA’s high-level productivity systems and our organization’s fundraising strategies, campaigns, and initiatives.

Bianca Levan (bottom row, left) - The Treasurer and Grants Management Lead who oversees AAWAA’s grant writing and management, liaising with private and public funding institutions both locally and nationally.

Cat Gutierrez (bottom row, center) - The Professional Development Lead who oversees AAWAA’s professional development opportunities for the leadership team, our Members, and AAPI women, nonbinary, and gender-expansive folks at large. She recently facilitated the first workshop of our new Universal Leadership Workshop Series, the recap of which you can read below!

Ajaya Bhatnagar (bottom row, right) - The Outreach Lead and newest Board Director who will be overseeing AAWAA’s outreach initiatives and programs. She represents our organization at public events, forums, and roundtables.

We look forward to sharing some exciting announcements about our leadership team (Board & Staff) next month! đź‘€

🤩 Our next Members Virtual Salon is August 4!📆 Tuesday, August 4 @ 5-7PM PT🧑‍💻 Online via Zoom🙋 Open to all *current* me...
07/29/2026

🤩 Our next Members Virtual Salon is August 4!

📆 Tuesday, August 4 @ 5-7PM PT
🧑‍💻 Online via Zoom
🙋 Open to all *current* members
✉️ RSVP here:https://luma.com/o854lw3f

Come gather, mingle, and make magic with your fellow Asian American women and nonbinary artists! Join AAWAA’s Members Virtual Salon — bringing together our brilliant creative community to share ideas, spark collaborations, and uplift one another. Hosted by Midori

Our salons are all about community and networking—a cozy, low-pressure space to meet new folks, swap resources, and recharge your artistic spirit. We’ll also have time to share current projects, explore creative connections, and discover ways to support each other’s growth.

Want to present your art or current projects to the group? Sign-up for a 5 minute slot through July 31 here: https://forms.gle/J3nG9iDpBvtJUHfq8?utm_source=luma

đź‘‹ Meet your Universal Leadership Workshop Series facilitator - Cat Gutierrez!Cat Gutierrez is a certified feminine leade...
07/15/2026

đź‘‹ Meet your Universal Leadership Workshop Series facilitator - Cat Gutierrez!

Cat Gutierrez is a certified feminine leadership coach and facilitator, shamanic practitioner, and artist with over 20 years of creative practice rooted in the intersection of art, energy, and embodiment.

Her coaching credentials are the result of three years of deep, rigorous immersion in women's holistic wellness, 500+ hours across positive psychology, transformational coaching, somatic embodiment, and women's leadership methodologies. She brings these tools not as theory, but as lived practice. She has walked the path she now guides others through.

Cat's work as an artist and shamanic practitioner runs alongside her coaching, not separate from it. She paints intuitively, each canvas beginning as a ritual, oracle card, movement, breath, music, and then color leading the way. Her work has been shown at the de Young Museum and lives in private collections and hospital spaces across California and Washington. The studio taught her what the coaching room confirmed: that when a woman stops performing and starts listening to herself, everything shifts.

Her workshops exist at the intersection of art, energy, and embodiment. She doesn't teach leadership from the outside in. She creates the conditions for women to access what they already carry, their own voice, their own frequency, their own authority, through the body, the breath, and the creative process.

This is for the woman who is accomplished, driven, and quietly wondering when she gets to feel like herself again. Cat knows that woman intimately. She was her.

Join us next week on 📆July 20 for the 1st workshop - Pitfall #1 People Pleasing! Register here: https://www.aawaa.net/shop/universal-leadership-workshop-series

đź“Ł Workshop Registration Now Live! https://www.aawaa.net/shop/universal-leadership-workshop-seriesJoin us for the launch ...
07/07/2026

đź“Ł Workshop Registration Now Live! https://www.aawaa.net/shop/universal-leadership-workshop-series

Join us for the launch of our Universal Leadership Workshop Series with the first workshop, Pitfall #1 People Pleasing. Discover powerful boundary-setting tools that shift you from prioritizing harmony at the expense of honesty toward grounded, genuine leadership.

đź“… July 20 @ 7:00-8:30PM PT, Online via Zoom
🙋 Open to AAPI women and gender expansive folks
🎫 $20 - AAWAA Members, $25 - Non-Members

💡 Announcing our new Universal Leadership Workshop Series🗣️ Claim Your Leadership Voice💖 Start Leading AuthenticallyImag...
06/19/2026

đź’ˇ Announcing our new Universal Leadership Workshop Series

🗣️ Claim Your Leadership Voice
đź’– Start Leading Authentically

Imagine leading with both confidence and compassion, building relationships rooted in genuine trust rather than temporary approval. Our Universal Leadership Workshop series offers transformative sessions designed to strengthen your self-trust, deepen your authentic connections, and amplify your influence as a leader in community.

Facilitator and AAWAA Board Director, Cat Gutierrez, has done all three life coaching programs provided by We Are the Women and the last was to become a Certified Feminine Leadership Coach and Facilitator at the beginning of 2025. These teachings have been nothing short of life-changing—guiding her towards freedom, harmony, unparalleled personal growth, and radical self-awareness and empowerment. They’ve shaped how Cat leads, how she loves, and how she shows up in her sacred work, relationships, and motherhood.

Save-the-Date for Workshop Series Launch:
đź“… July 20 @ 7:00-8:30PM PT
🧑‍💻 Online via Zoom

More info and official registration link coming soon!

đź”” Announcing our membership system upgradeDear valued AAWAA Members, we're excited to announce that we've just upgraded ...
06/12/2026

đź”” Announcing our membership system upgrade

Dear valued AAWAA Members, we're excited to announce that we've just upgraded our membership system to improve your experience on our website!

Please be patient as we make some final tweaks in the next couple of weeks. Members will now have an easier time signing up, updating your profile, and managing your membership.

If you experience any issues or have questions, please reach out at đź“©[email protected]!

🤗 Let us give a warm welcome to AAWAA’s newest addition to its Board of Directors, Ajaya Bhatnagar!Ajaya (she/her) is a ...
06/12/2026

🤗 Let us give a warm welcome to AAWAA’s newest addition to its Board of Directors, Ajaya Bhatnagar!

Ajaya (she/her) is a San Francisco–based mixed media artist and arts professional with a background in exhibition coordination, gallery administration, and community engagement. Her interdisciplinary practice incorporates painting and sculpture, and her work has been exhibited across the Bay Area. Alongside her visual art practice, she is a trained Bharatanatyam dancer with over 15 years of experience. Ajaya brings a strong foundation in creative direction, public engagement, and collaborative programming within the arts sector.

📣 Calling all Members! Join us next week for our next Members Virtual Salon📆 Wednesday, June 17 @ 5-7PM PT🧑‍💻 Online via...
06/09/2026

đź“Ł Calling all Members! Join us next week for our next Members Virtual Salon

📆 Wednesday, June 17 @ 5-7PM PT
🧑‍💻 Online via Zoom
🙋 Open to all *current* members

Come gather, mingle, and make magic with your fellow Asian American women and nonbinary artists! Join AAWAA's Members Virtual Salon — bringing together our brilliant creative community to share ideas, spark collaborations, and uplift one another. Hosted by Midori.

​Our salons are all about community and networking—a cozy, low-pressure space to meet new folks, swap resources, and recharge your artistic spirit. We’ll also have time to share current projects, explore creative connections, and discover ways to support each other’s growth.

Want to present your art or current projects to the group? Sign-up for a 5 minute slot through June 12. Spots are limited and first-come-first-serve.

RSVP and sign-up to present here:https://www.aawaa.net/aawaa-events

đź‘‹ Say hello to the Artist Members interviewed in Pass It On - Episode 2: (left-to-right) Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, Nancy...
06/05/2026

đź‘‹ Say hello to the Artist Members interviewed in Pass It On - Episode 2: (left-to-right) Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, Nancy Hom, and Lenore Chinn!

Pass It On is an initiative to capture oral histories of AAWAA’s members to add to AAWAA’s archives. The purpose of this initiative is to create a space that encourages a variety of members in our community to engage in meaningful dialogues and to record these conversations over time to build a collective portrait of AAWAA. This program is our effort to steward the long-term representation of the artistic and cultural work of AAPI women artists and legitimize the value of these experiences and hxstories. The series was filmed and edited by fellow AAWAA Member Diana Chen.

🎬 Episode 2 is now live on AAWAA's website - https://www.aawaa.net/pass-it-on

đź’” It is with very heavy hearts that we share that our incredible co-founder, Flo Oy Wong, has passed on April 11 followi...
04/30/2026

đź’” It is with very heavy hearts that we share that our incredible co-founder, Flo Oy Wong, has passed on April 11 following some major health complications.

You can read her obituary here: https://www.eastbaytimes.com/obituaries/flo-oy-wong-sunnyvale/

Flo was beloved by all who met her. Everyone at AAWAA will miss her firebrand energy, outspokenness, curiosity, and warm encouragement. She always used her voice and organized when there was injustice. Over the years, she connected so many Asian and Asian American women artists, creating spaces for everyone to be proud of their own cultures and backgrounds and accepted for who they truly are so that each of us could pursue our passions and reach our full potential.

During her extraordinary career, Flo was a master of reinvention as an educator, artist at 40, curator, and later poet at 75. Her art has been exhibited throughout the US, most notably on Angel Island and at the Smithsonian as well as abroad in China. She published two art books with the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center - "70/30: 70 Years of Living, 30 Years of Art" (2008) and "Flo Oy Wong: The Whole Pie" (2013). On her 80th birthday in 2018, Flo published her book of poems, "Dreaming of Glistening Pomelos".

She was featured in interviews on the documentary AAWAA produced with Q***r Women of Color Media Arts Project and directed by Madeleine Lim, "The Worlds of Bernice Bing" (2013). Flo is captured on AAWAA’s oral history series "Pass It On: Birth of A Movement" (2022) along with fellow-co-founder Betty Nobue Kano and founding member Kim Anno telling stories from the organization’s beginnings.

In 2024, the Legacy mural at 723 Webster Street in Oakland Chinatown was painted by artist Desi Mundo based on Flo’s drawings of her family and their restaurant. Andi Wong produced two short documentaries about her - "Tales of the Tofu Goddess: The Artful Life of Flo Oy Wong" (2025), and "Drawn from Life: The Creative Legacy of Flo Oy Wong (2023)" with support from Contemporary Asian Theater Scene. In recent years, she enjoyed performing poetry with her late sister Nellie Wong and San Francisco Poet Laureate Genny Lim as The Last Hoisan Poets.

She continues to be such an inspiration to all our members and will be dearly missed. Her love and legacy shines and lives on in so many of us! 🌟

1st image: Portrait of Flo taken by her husband, Ed Wong.

2nd image: Flo (center) performs with The Last Hoisan Poets (with the late Nellie Wong on left) at the opening of In The Presence of: Collective Histories of The Asian American Women Artists Association exhibition at Berkeley Art Center on January 27, 2024. Photo credit: Minoosh Zomorodinia.

3rd image: AAWAA Members and staff pose with Flo (top row, 3rd from left) at her late sister Nellie Wong’s celebration of life on February 14, 2026 at Oakland Asian Cultural Center. Photo credit: Bob Hsiang

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1890 Bryant Street, Ste 302
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