Dallas, TX
‘We are here in Texas’: Dallas Asian American Art Collective puts on its first show
A photography print of a man inside a minaret tower. A ceramic chalice. A tissue paper collage illustration from a children’s book. A short film about a trip to Europe with friends.
Each of these pieces of artwork was created by Asian American artists from North Texas and featured in the Dallas Asian American Art Collective’ first annual art show over the weekend.
The co-curators Leili Arai Tavallaei, Jackie Tao Law and Christina J. Hahn, who are all Dallas-based artists, partnered with The Cedars Union where they put on the show.
Tavallaei said the collective wanted to reflect the diversity of emerging and established AAPI artists in North Texas. The co-curator is a printmaker, mixed-media painter and animator whose work explores her mixed race identity as someone with parents who are Persian Iranian and Hāfu, mixed Japanese identity.
“A lot of people, when they hear of Asian artists, they usually think of international Asian artists that have made it big across the pond,” she said. “We here want to kind of make a statement that we are, in fact, here in the States. We are here in Texas.”
Law said that distinction of being an Asian American artist matters because being part of the diaspora is an entirely different experience from being Asian.
“You end up having this blend of maybe your home culture and then being from wherever you immigrated to,” said Law, who is a first-generation Hakka Chinese visual artist.
Here are some of the artists who displayed work at the show:
Growing up way out east in Tyler, Mallari said his family would travel two hours one-way to get groceries from the Hong Kong Market Place in Dallas. It was part of his family’s Sunday ritual: get a haircut, buy groceries and head home.
Mallari said there’s a “small but mighty” Filipino community in Tyler, but for a long time there wasn’t a space to pick up basic ingredients to make food from his culture.
“When I was a kid, I was annoyed that we would have to be there. But as I got older, I appreciated how important that was, how some of my favorite foods we wouldn’t have been able to make it or they wouldn’t have been my favorite foods had we not gone there.”
The second-generation Filipino American filmmaker describes “To Here and Back” as a visual tone poem that reflects the immigrant story.
“I think it’s about coming back to a place and seeing how time has changed it even though it’s kind of stayed the same in your head,” he said.
Berglund said this last year she focused on “trying to be more Chinese” and returning to her roots. A big part of that has been drawing scenes from everyday life in China, including sketches of three delivery drivers, a night market full of delicious snacks or people waiting in line with thick parkas.
“I was just there about a year ago during the winter when everyone was in the big, puffy jackets which is not something you see in Texas,” she said.
Originally from Beijing, the artist – who works as a web architect by day – now lives in Plano with her family. She sometimes makes sketches from photos and online reference art, which reminds her of how different the scenery is back in China.
“I remember the hutongs, which are the little alleys. I remember wearing my red scarf as a little kid and the yellow hats in elementary,” she said. “Seeing those things in drawings brings back a lot of memories.”
Choi is a medical student in North Texas by day and artist by night. His colorful, abstract paintings don’t immediately seem to reference language but that’s the inspiration for his work.
He said he incorporates Chinese typography into his pieces as a system that connects Korean and Japanese, the two languages that he speaks.
The artist said he wanted to explore questions like: “How do we represent the world through language? What are some ways that you can kind of twist or distort or play with the form of language to represent the world?”
Choi said language has been an important way to connect with loved ones.
“It’s how I feel connected to my family abroad. Whenever I go back to that language context, it feels like coming home in a way,” he said. I feel like so much of Korean culture is bound up in the way language is constructed, in the way you relate to people and honorifics.”
Arts Access is an arts journalism collaboration powered by The Dallas Morning News and KERA.
This community-funded journalism initiative is funded by the Better Together Fund, Carol & Don Glendenning, City of Dallas OAC, Communities Foundation of Texas, The University of Texas at Dallas, The Dallas Foundation, Eugene McDermott Foundation, James & Gayle Halperin Foundation, Jennifer & Peter Altabef and The Meadows Foundation. The News and KERA retain full editorial control of Arts Access’ journalism.
Los Angeles Lakers (18-7, third in the Western Conference) vs. Utah Jazz (10-15, 10th in the Western Conference)
Salt Lake City; Thursday, 9 p.m. EST
BETMGM SPORTSBOOK LINE: Lakers -6.5; over/under is 241.5
BOTTOM LINE: Utah hosts the Los Angeles Lakers after the Jazz took down the Dallas Mavericks 140-133 in overtime.
The Jazz are 6-11 in conference matchups. Utah allows the most points in the Western Conference, giving up 126.1 points and is allowing opponents to shoot 48.8%.
The Lakers have gone 13-5 against Western Conference opponents. Los Angeles has a 5-0 record in one-possession games.
The Jazz are shooting 45.8% from the field this season, 2.3 percentage points lower than the 48.1% the Lakers allow to opponents. The Lakers are shooting 50.4% from the field, 1.6% higher than the 48.8% the Jazz’s opponents have shot this season.
The teams meet for the third time this season. The Lakers won 108-106 in the last matchup on Nov. 24. Luka Doncic led the Lakers with 33 points, and Keyonte George led the Jazz with 27 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Lauri Markkanen is scoring 27.8 points per game with 7.0 rebounds and 2.1 assists for the Jazz. George is averaging 37.0 points and 5.0 rebounds while shooting 55.0% over the past 10 games.
Doncic is averaging 34.7 points, 8.7 rebounds, 8.8 assists and 1.5 steals for the Lakers. LeBron James is averaging 26 points, four assists, two steals and two blocks over the last 10 games.
LAST 10 GAMES: Jazz: 5-5, averaging 119.1 points, 44.2 rebounds, 30.1 assists, 7.2 steals and 3.4 blocks per game while shooting 46.8% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 126.1 points per game.
Lakers: 7-3, averaging 118.8 points, 42.4 rebounds, 23.6 assists, 6.0 steals and 5.4 blocks per game while shooting 49.3% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 118.9 points.
INJURIES: Jazz: Georges Niang: out (foot), Jusuf Nurkic: day to day (rest), Walker Kessler: out for season (shoulder).
Lakers: Maxi Kleber: day to day (back), Austin Reaves: out (calf).
___
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
Packers coach Matt LaFleur updates on injuries ahead of Bears rematch
The Green Bay Packers had a number on injuries in the Broncos game, including Micah Parsons’ season-ending ACL injury. Matt LaFleur has latest on them.
GREEN BAY – Packers edge rusher Micah Parsons won’t be with the team as he awaits surgery on his torn left ACL.
But it’s for a good reason.
“He’s about to have another child here pretty quick,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said Dec. 16 in his press conference.
Parsons has a home in the Dallas area and has returned there for the birth of his third child. He has not had surgery on his knee and LaFleur said he did not have a timeline on when that might occur.
Typically, doctors allow swelling to go down before they operate to repair the ligament, and so it’s possible surgery hasn’t been scheduled.
Parsons tore his ACL late in the third quarter of the Packers’ 34-26 loss to the Broncos on Dec. 14. Tests confirmed the injury Dec. 15.
LaFleur said he didn’t know if Parsons would have the surgery in Dallas.
As for the rest of the season, LaFleur said he thought Parsons would be around to support his teammates once his child is born and his medical situation is settled.
“He’ll be around, for sure,” LaFleur said.
Recent activities reminded me of a simple roadmap I laid out in these pages (Aug. 31, 2025, “Lessons from George W. Bush, his institution”) for effective leadership: providing safety, security, solvency and sanity.
In short, great leadership should provide physical safety for those being led and the security that they can trust the institutions to govern intelligently and with their best interests at heart, while ensuring both the financial solvency of the enterprise and the sanity to keep the place focused optimistically on the future.
Good leadership should do what it is strong at and be intellectually honest to own up to what it does not do well. Then, it should simply stop wasting time on those things outside its core competency. As my former boss was prone to pointing out — a government should do fewer things, but do them well!
As it relates to the current debate over the future of Dallas City Hall, applying these basic principles is instructive as the issue touches each of these priorities.
Our city government should exit the real estate business, since it is clearly not its core competency, especially given its record of mismanagement of City Hall over the years as well as other well-documented and costly recent real estate dalliances. It is time to own that track record and begin to be better stewards of taxpayer money. Plus, given the large vacancies in existing downtown buildings, relocating city functions as a renter will be much more economical.
The definition of insanity is to do the same thing and expect different results. Thinking that the city will be able to remediate City Hall’s issues in a permanent and economically feasible way is naïve. It is time for sanity to prevail — for the city to move on from an anachronistic building that is beyond repair, returning that land to the tax rolls while saving both tenancy costs and reducing downtown office vacancies at the same time.
I appreciate that the iconic architect’s name on the building is a city asset and demolition would toss that aside. But our neglect up to this point is evidence that it was already being tossed, just one unaddressed issue at a time. While punting is not ideal, neither is being in the predicament we are in. Leaders must constantly weigh costs and benefits as part of the job and make sound decisions going forward.
We now have an opportunity to demonstrate leadership and apply all of our energy and careful thought to execute on a dynamic plan to activate that part of downtown for the benefit of the next generation. Engaging Linda McMahon, who is CEO of the Dallas Economic Development Corporation, is heartening on this issue given her experience and leadership in real estate.
This is a commercial decision and ignoring economic realities is foolhardy. We have the chance to do something special that future citizens will look back upon and see that today’s leaders were visionary.
I’d like to see the city exercise its common sense and pursue the win-win strategy. By doing so, all Dallas citizens will be more secure knowing that its leadership is capable of making smart decisions, even if it means admitting past mistakes. The first rule when you’ve dug yourself into a hole: “Stop digging!”
It is time for our leaders to lead.
Ken Hersh is the co-founder and former CEO of NGP Energy Capital Management and former CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.
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