Surface Tension

Sophia Chai is a Rochester-based artist born in South Korea who immigrated to New York City at fourteen. Chai received her B.A. in chemistry from the University of Chicago and her M.F.A. in photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Before relocating to Rochester, MN, in 2017 from Brooklyn, New York, Chai showed her work in group exhibitions at venues in New York City, including Trestle Projects, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Knockdown Center, A.I.R. Gallery, and TSA Gallery, among others. In addition to a solo exhibition at 106 Green (Brooklyn) in 2016, Chai mounted two solo exhibitions in 2020: Sight Lines at the Rochester Art Center (Minnesota) and Interpolation at Hair + Nails Gallery in Minneapolis. Chai is grateful for the financial support she has received from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council (2019), the Minnesota State Arts Board (2020 and 2022), and the Jerome Foundation (2019-2020). Chai is presently working on her first permanent public outdoor art project for Discovery Walk, a new four-block linear parkway in downtown Rochester, commissioned by the city of Rochester and Destination Medical Center. Chai is represented by Hair + Nails Gallery in Minneapolis.

Paula McCartney makes artist books, photographs, and ceramics that illustrate her collaborations with the natural world and consider ways that light activates both objects and environments. She has received fellowships in both Artist Books and Photography from the McKnight Foundation and grants from Women’s Studio Workshop, the Aaron Siskind Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. McCartney’s photographs have been exhibited nationally at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Her books are included in the artist book collections of the Walker Art Center, Museum of Modern Art, Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University, Getty Research Institute, among many others. Her two monographs include Bird Watching and A Field Guide to Snow and Ice. McCartney holds an M.F.A. in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and a certificate in Creative Studies from the International Center for Photography.

Christine Nguyen was born and raised in California and currently resides in Aurora, Colorado, and also works in Long Beach, California. She is a lover of animals, plants, and nature. She received her B.F.A. from California State University, Long Beach and M.F.A. from University of California, Irvine. Exhibitions of her work have been shown nationally and internationally. Her works can be found in various collections such as the J. Paul Getty Museum Department of Photographs; Getty Research Institute; Armand Hammer Museum; Grunwald Center for Graphic Art; Los Angeles World Airport’s Collection; Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, CA; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Hanoi, Vietnam; Long Beach Museum of Art; Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum in Long Beach, California; Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio; and Microsoft Collection.