Luzhen Qiu

Luzhen Qiu is a Chinese American artist living in Metro Detroit. She was born in 1971 in Hangzhou, China. She graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit with a MFA degree. With 28 years of art teaching experience, Luzhen has taught art classes at The Art & Design and Technical College of China Academy of Art, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, and Paint Creek Center for the Art in Michigan.

In her works, Luzhen is always searching for ways of dealing with contents and forms by organizing objects from chaotic contents into re-arranged forms. She is a multi-disciplinary artist working with both representational and abstract artworks. With her color pencil on layed mylar works, Luzhen makes a dreamscape from her memory by juxtaposing fragments of memories from her childhood, Chinese traditional fabric textiles, and old legends. Her works are visual poems with narrative content which draw the viewer into an open-ended story. Her works are layered with depth of transparency.

Luzhen’s artworks have been displayed in various galleries including but not limited to the Form gallery in Cranbrook Art Museum, MI; Detroit Artist Market; Detroit Music Hall, Lansing Gallery; High Art Gallery in Traverse City; Ann Arbor Art Center; Eastern Michigan University gallery in Ypsilanti; Museum of New Art in Michigan; Touchstone Gallery in DC; Farmington Museum in New Mexico. Her work has earned her a host of awards including the first place of “2004 Art Environmental Activism” show (nine states including Ontario art jury show); the first place of the 2005 Canton Art Show, MI; the second place of the “2016 Silver Medal Exhibition” in Scarab Club in Detroit MI; the third place of “2003 The Annual All Media Exhibition” in Ann Arbor Art Center in MI. She is also the recipient of the artist grants for Vermont artist residencies.  In the past, Luzhen also had her solo show at Paint Creek Center for the Art in Rochester, MI.

She received her graduate degree from Hunter College in New York where she lived and studied in the 1970’s. This experience offered exposure to many well known artists and the diverse and confrontational art scene of the time. She has generally focused on landscape themes but often included wildlife or urban landscape in her work. Mediums used range from oil on canvas to India ink and water based paint on paper.