"I was just feeling into a fucking painting. But still I don't feel like it's explicit enough. Like, if I'm 17, and I don't even know when I'm hungry, am I tired, have I had any sleep—if you don't know that, then how can you talk about art that comes from such an unconscious place? I always said 'I don't know,' and 'I still don’t.’ What I'm trying to do is be honest, like Cockney rhyming slang or something. Like a transcendent sound that doesn't mean anything. A real fucking mess." — 2007

Lowell Ervin Ong is a Long Beach, California based painter, creative director, art director, designer, and zine fest organizer. His paintings are layered graphic depictions of a diasporic Asian-American man living in the United States. His paintings invoke a range of psycho-sexual-socio-emotional imagery that draws up drama, politics, “sci-fi” otherworldliness, human terror, and at times, comedy and violence.
He was born in Manila, Philippines in 1983.
He’s worked in skateboarding, branding, advertising, automotive, telecom, film, and financial. He won a Brand Identity Award in 2016’s AIGA Brand Identity Awards for graphic design systems. He co-founded the Julian Foundation and the Long Beach Zine Fest in 2014 to 15, and has been a photographer + zine maker since he was a teenager. He grew up drawing and skateboarding.
He lives & works in Long Beach, California with his wife, ceramicist Sara Ekua Todd. 
Original works available on Something Or Other.
Ad Work >

Select Notes
2020 to 2016– Skullphone Studio Residency
2016 – AIGA Design Award Winner Brand Identity
2015 – Co-founded the Long Beach Zine Fest
2014 – Co-founded the Julian Foundation
2009 – Est. first working studio in Santa Ana
2005 – Bachelors in Graphic Design

Select Exhibits
2014 – LA Art Book Fair, Printed Matter @ MOCA
2009 – Collected Video Works (gallery)
2005 – Voice1156 Gallery (interview) @ San Diego

Select Zine Fests
2016 – Orange County Zine Fest
2016 – Long Beach Zine Fest
2015 – Inland Empire Zine Fest
2015 – Los Angeles Zine Fest
2015 – Long Beach Zine Fest
2014 – IE Zine Fest
2014 – Orange County Zine Fest
2014 – Los Angeles Zine Fest
2013 – Inland Empire Zine Fest
2013 – San Diego Zine Fest
2013 – San Francisco Zine Fest
2013 – International Zine Fest at Space 1520, Los Angeles 

Zine Stockists
2014 – MOCA, Los Angeles
2014 – Skylight Books, Los Angeles
2014 – The Last Bookstore, Los Angeles
2013 – Seeing Things Gallery, San Jose
2013 – Good Press, Glasgow UK
2013 – Petrella’s Imports, Brooklyn NYC
2013 – Ti Pi Tin, London UK

Self-Published Zines

2019 
Eastern Exposure
Liege
Somewhere
Critical Issues of the Future

2016 - 2017
Hues 
Essence
Shimmy shimmy
Shiro Kuro 

2015
The First Entry is a Bitch (perzine)
Quiet 
SKLSKH
Scott Lee (Julian Foundation) 
My Thoughts are Running Out of Control (perzine)
Ten Portraits
Antwerp 2 
XO Zine

2014
Omo 22 (Anjosefien Falelavaki)
Nostalgia 
Last life in the universe (BIG)

2013
Bad People Are Demanding 
Poedes 
Land(e)scape
Objekte 

2012
Bruised
Nuke Cataclysm AIDS 
Merging Oceans

2001
Modus Operandi

Education
Bachelors in Graphic Design. 
Arts Institute Orange County.

Born
Manila, Philippines 1983.