Melissa Choi and Isaac Tin Wei Lin on Creative Partnership
Today I want to bring you an episode with 2 friends of mine who are deeply creative and married, yes married. I have long been interested in creative couples who work in different mediums and them coming together to create something sublime. Our guest today are Issacs Tin Wei Lin and Melissa Choi. I knew Melissa from the fashion community when she cofounded the line Senpai Kohai with past guest Pia Panaligan. Melissa has worked in many parts of the fashion industry as a designer, artist, stylist and more. She is a perennially creative person who always has an amazing sense of style and always a few different creative projects she is working on. Isaac tin Wei Lin is an artist who’s graphic and abstract paintings are buzzing with details of calligraphic, brushed and hand-drawn patterns. His work has appeared in a number of galleries and museum’s such as the Philadelphia Art Museum, Berkeley art museum and Fleisher Ollman Gallery. Earlier this year they decided to embark on creating a clothing line together: Choi Lin, this featured the artwork of Issacs and design sensibility of Melissa. The result is dazzling: pops of colors and buzzy prints along with a few beautifully hand sequins cartoon cats. They launched the collection with a pop up and art installation at the Room Shop Vintage studio in Philly and then did an installation and pop up of it in Tokyo. I am so happy to get to chat with them about their own art practices along with what it was like coming together and working on this.
