"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 publisher and festival organizer. His paintings are layered graphic depictions of psycho-sexual-socio-emotional imagery that invoke a sense of human drama, politics, “sci-fi” otherworldliness, terror, violence, and at times, comedy.
As a working creative and art director, he’s worked in advertising, skateboarding, design, branding, automotive, financial, telecom, and film. He won an AIGA Brand Identity Award in 2016 for graphic design systems. In 2014 and 2015, he co-founded the Julian Foundation and the Long Beach Zine Fest. He’s been an avid photographer + zine maker since he was a teenager. And he grew up drawing and skateboarding since he was a kid. He was born in Manila, Philippines in 1983.
He lives & works in Long Beach, California with his wife and ceramicist Sara Ekua Todd. Original artworks and studio visits available upon request fightingelegy@gmail.com.

Selected Notes
2022 to current – Critical Mass Creative Director
2022 – Rose Park on Pine Art Dinner Party
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

Selected Exhibits & Zine Festivals
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 – LA Art Book Fair, Printed Matter @ MOCA
2014 – Inland Empire 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 
2009 – Collected Video Works (view)

Previous 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

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 of Orange County.

Born
Manila, Philippines 1983.