19 Facts About Bernice Bing

Bernice Bing was a Chinese American lesbian artist involved in the San Francisco Bay Area art scene in the 1960s.

Bernice Bing was known for her interest in the Beats and Zen Buddhism, and for the "calligraphy-inspired abstraction" in her paintings, which she adopted after studying with Saburo Hasegawa.

Bernice Bing was a co-founder of San Francisco's SCRAP, according to the 2013 film about her life and an article in the SF City College Guardsman.

When Bernice Bing was six years old, her mother died due to a heart ailment, leaving Bernice Bing with limited exposure to her traditional Chinese heritage.

Bernice Bing occasionally stayed in Oakland with her grandmother, whose praises fostered Bernice Bing's interest in art.

Bernice Bing was involved in the arts throughout high school, winning several local and regional art contests.

In 1958, after one semester in CCAC, Bernice Bing transferred to the California School of Fine Arts.

Bernice Bing showed large-scale works, including her painting Las Meninas based on Diego Velazquez's Baroque court scene, entitled Las Meninas.

Bernice Bing moved to Mayacamas Vineyards, Napa Valley in 1963 for a three-year period but returned to Berkeley for her two-person exhibition at Berkeley Gallery.

From 1984 to 85, Bernice Bing traveled to Korea, Japan and China, studying traditional Chinese ink landscape painting at the Zhejiang Art Academy in Haungzhou.

Bernice Bing involved herself in many programs and organizations, like the National Endowment for the Arts Expansion program, the Neighborhood Arts Program, and the San Francisco Art Festival at the San Francisco Civic Center.

Bernice Bing was an artist under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, which funded 20,000 arts sector jobs nationwide.

In 1977, Bernice Bing created an art workshop with the Baby Wah Chings, a Chinatown gang, after the Golden Dragon Massacre in San Francisco.

Bernice Bing served as the first executive director of the South of Market Cultural Center from 1980 to 1984, expanding the programming during her time there.

Bernice Bing spent six weeks studying Chinese calligraphy with Wang Dong Ling and Chinese landscape painting with Professor Yang at the Zhejiang Art Academy in Hangzhou, China.

Bernice Bing initially worked as a waitress and cook in order to support herself.

In 1989, Bernice Bing's career was revitalized after meeting Moira Roth, a professor of art history at Mills College who suggested that Bernice Bing join the Asian American Women Artists Association.

Bernice Bing was selected by the National Women Caucus for the Arts Visual Arts Honor Award in 1996, in partnership with a group exhibition at the Rose Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

In 2013, the documentary film The Worlds of Bernice Bing was co-produced by the Asian American Women Artists Association and Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project.