Lion Reborn Art Exhibit: Joshua Sin & Lark Pien
August 25 @ 10:00 AM – November 1 @ 4:30 PM
August 25 – November 1 | Free with admission or membership
Experience Overview
From August 25 – November 1, Lion Reborn invites you to explore the rich history of one of China’s most beloved traditions: the lion dance. First, discover an educational exhibit diving into the martial arts roots of traditional Chinese lion dance. Then, immerse yourself in the work of local artists Joshua Sin and Lark Pien as you wander deeper into the garden. Through various mediums, these two artists interpret beloved Chinese cultural traditions, from kung fu and qigong to relationships and spirituality. Come get inspired and see how these legends and traditions endure today!
Featured Artists
Lark Pien
Inkblots & movement studies
Some fifty years ago, Ye-Ye, Lark’s grandpa, sat her at his desk and adjusted her grip to hold the Chinese brush upright. They dipped it into the ink reservoir and dabbed it on the block, twirling the point and relieving it of excess. Painting bamboo and cherry blossoms in her grandfather’s office is one of her earliest childhood memories.
Lark today colors graphic novels for YA authors (Christina Diaz Gonazles, Gene Luen Yang, and Jennifer Holm). She received a Harvey, a Kim Yale award, and a Koyama Micro Grant, and her minicomic characters long tail-kitty and mr. elephanter are adapted into children’s books. Find her tai chi studies and Immortal Chicken comics on Patreon and Instagram.
Joshua Sin
Soft Guardian & Kung Fu-inspired hats
Joshua Sin is a Toronto-born, Portland-based sculptor and installation artist. A former world champion gymnast, he brings a lifelong discipline of repetition and precision to his work. After years in corporate design, including Nike’s retail concept stores in Tokyo, Seoul, and Berlin, Sin left the industry to pursue art independently. A residency with GLEAN and Recology, working inside Portland’s Northwest Transfer Station, reshaped his understanding of material. His ongoing Descendant Series, rooted in a centuries-old family ancestral book, reconstructs erased histories through reclaimed textiles. His work has been exhibited at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and the Portland Chinatown Museum.
About the Artwork | Joshua Sin
Soft Guardian draws on the Chinese lion dance and the Five Animal Styles, developed in the Shaolin Temple by Zhue Yuen, Li Sou, and Bai Yu Feng, who looked to the tiger, crane, leopard, snake, and dragon not only as fighting forms but as a map of human development: courage, compassion, focus, awareness, and self-discipline.
This work asks what protection looks like when it is soft, stitched from reclaimed fabric, worn martial arts uniforms and belts—cloth that has already trained and held a body. A suspended lion head presides overhead as a terrestrial guardian, while four wearable hats become guardians of their own, each one armor-shaped but soft to the touch, carrying forward the same balance the old masters sought between hard and soft, strength and stillness.
- Baihu 白虎: White Tiger – West, Metal, Autumn
- Zhuque 朱雀: Vermillion Bird – South, Fire, Summer
- Canlong 蒼龍: Azure Dragon – East, Wood, Spring
- Xuanwu 玄武: Black Tortoise – North, Water, Winter
Presented inside a classical Ming dynasty scholar’s garden, a space built by men of wealth and power as a retreat from the pressures of public life into the humblingly grand and awe-inspiring natural world, this work answers with a different inheritance: protection stitched by hand and passed without ceremony, soft where the garden asks for stone.
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Parking & Directions
Free Lan Su Parking
There is free first come, first served parking in our sister lot next to the garden at 424 NW Third Avenue. Additional metered parking and garages are available on surrounding streets.
