Ophelia Chong
Ophelia was born and raised in Toronto, Canada by her parents George and Josephine. Her father George knew a good thing when he spotted Josephine walking alone on the sidewalk, three months later they were married, nine and a half months later Ophelia ( from her father's love of Shakespeare) was born, closely followed by her sister Dinah (who's name was pulled from a hat of names supplied by the nurses and not named after a can of Ham as most suspected).
After too many bone chilling winters in Toronto, Ophelia packed two
bags full of wool sweaters and moved to Los Angeles. Once there, she
enrolled at Art Center College of Design, and graduated with a BFA
(painting) and never looked back or picked up a brush since. She worked
as a photographer illustrator for Raygun, Interview, Bleach, Lava and
other magazines with names similar to household cleaners. After one too
many run-ins with crazed musicians and non-paying publishers, she then
moved into the Film Business as Creative Director for Strand Releasing.
She also was Creative Director for the Slamdance, LAIFF, Outfest, and
NoDance Film Festivals.
The siren call of the internet pulled her from the safety of the deck into the turbulent waters of the world wide web. There she found footing at voxxy.com, an interactive teen
girl website and launched the site successfully, however she no longer
uses the words "empowered", "grrrl" or "you go girl". After the first
implosion of the web, she crawled back to the print world, licking her
digital wounds to become the Creative Director of the Workbook, and
while there garnered six awards for excellence in design.
The Dead Tree Society snail mailed her and told that "print is dead", and
she again stuck her toes back into the "internets" as the Art Director
of numerous websites and User Interface Designer, from coolmom.com, allykatzz.com, projectlore.com
and many more. To fill her time in between uploads she also
illustrates, her work appears in The Sourcebook Of Contemporary Illustration (HarperCollins International), Lemon Poppyseed (Gestalten Press),
Theme Magazine, 1000 Artist Journal Pages (Quarry Press), CSS Artistry
(Peachpit Press), Source Illustration (HarperCollins International) and
on online magazines such as Two Dogs (Milan) and 617B (Taiwan).
Her Letterpress and Collages have appeared in gallery shows in Brooklyn, Michigan, Virginia and Boston.
Ophelia writes about the human side of the internet machine on HowToSplitAnAtom.com.
She is honored to have been asked to write for KCET, to
write about the intersections of the internet and life in Los Angeles
from her non-jaded view.
You can email her at: ophelia@opheliachong.org
Image: Ophelia Chong
