By Alyssa Schmitt
Chi-Irena Wong stands with her work on display in a solo exhibition at the Shaker Historical Society Museum.
Canvas Photo / Alyssa Schmitt
Self-proclaimed doodler Chi-Irena Wong credits the beginning of her art journey to the margins of her high school homework papers. Anime characters crowded the edges of worksheets, and she taught herself to experiment with whatever affordable materials she had, like watercolor and colored pencils.
What began as a collection of small, off-to-the-side sketches has since scaled far beyond notebook paper. Today, Wong’s work can be seen across Northeast Ohio—in exhibitions, on library cards, in coloring books and tote bags, and even stretched across the sides of Cleveland buildings, transforming blank facades into vibrant, absurd fantasy worlds of her own making.
Yet when she first started out, inspired by Japanese artist and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki and “Tekkonkinkreet,” a cult Japanese animated film, art wasn’t a perceived skill—just the one thing she felt drawn to. “All I really had was not even a talent,” Wong, 27, says. “It was like a passion, and I just followed my passion.”
That passion led her to apply to the Cleveland Institute of Art with a portfolio built from observational drawings and creative pieces. In 2016, as a CIA freshman studying drawing, she felt inspired—and slightly behind her classmates—and began developing the technical foundation of her skills. Once she began focusing on her specific discipline, she noticed her work shift.
What if clocks were pancake makers? Wong explored the idea in this piece titled “Griddle Alarm completed in 2021 on 22-inch-by-18-inch paper in watercolor, gouache and acrylic ink.
Photo courtesy of Chi-Irena Wong
“That’s where we were honing our foundation skills and technical skills,” the Brook Park resident explains. “There were also classes that allowed free creativity to draw what you are interested in, and so I started drawing my characters.”
In time, those characters developed distinct lives, personalities and quirks—always mixed with a bit of humor or absurdity. Wong’s smaller works often focus on a single figure captured in a slice-of-life moment, while her larger pieces tend to arrive in a different way.
“That is when I started asking myself these really silly questions, which is called ‘What if?’ and ‘Why not?’” she explains. “Basically I will ask these silly questions, like, ‘What if corn was turned into a flower?’”
From there, her imagination widens into entire worlds that fold the ordinary into the absurd: characters browsing through bouquets of corn; a diner with clocks that make pancakes; grocery shopping done by claw machines; burger joints that produce lint cheese from overworked washing machines.
Corn isn’t the ingredient you cook with in this world, it’s a flower you give a loved one. This work stemmed from the question “What if corn was turned into a flower?” Titled “Corn Flower,” it was completed in 2020 on 28-inch-by-34-inch paper in watercolor, gouache and acrylic ink.
Photo courtesy of Chi-Irena Wong
The question, she says, serves as a prompt that allows her to draw more details and explore the world. These are not mere cartoons but inventive economies, complete with their own infrastructures and social norms. Wong’s characters—often cute, imaginative creatures and humans—move across canvases, accruing minor histories and idiosyncratic habits, so that one painting reads like a page from a lived-in world.
A fantastical fast food restaurant that sells lint-based food, stemming from the question “What if lint is the new form of cheese and then there’s a lint burger joint?” Titled “Burger Joint,” it was completed in 2019 on 19-inch-by-29-inch paper in watercolor, gouache, acrylic ink.
Photo courtesy of Chi-Irena Wong
As Wong builds her worlds, she draws heavily from the architecture and infrastructure of her early inspirations—narrow alleyways, compact storefronts, tangled telephone wires, trash cans, fire hydrants. These elements anchor her scenes, giving even the most whimsical scenarios a sense of place.
“(It’s) filled with bustling activity, and so that kind of energy, I like to translate that,” she says.
Much of that energy comes from her childhood summers in New York City, where she visited her grandparents.
“I really enjoyed going to Chinatown in Manhattan in New York City, because it was such a compact place,” she says. “It’s also a place where there were a lot of Asians. Living here in Cleveland, Ohio, there’s not that many. So, in a sense, I felt at home and connected.”
She encountered that same mix of density and energy during a trip to Hong Kong in September 2023, made possible by the Cleveland Institute of Art’s President’s Traveling Scholarship.
Traveling with her parents, who had also lived in the city, Wong wandered through neighborhoods, taking note of the efficiency and compactness of the urban landscape—details she says will shape her future work.
“(The architecture) was the most insane element there,” she says. “They’re known for their sky-high-rise buildings, and you could just see how tall they were. Things were narrow as well, and you’d see little shops on the ground floors and you can see the wear and tear from the age, and you can also see it had such a small setting, yet they’re operating very well.”
Near the end of her time at CIA, Wong was offered the opportunity to paint her first mural at a Parma ice rink. After her last semester was thrown off course by the COVID-19 pandemic—which Wong describes as one of the hardest challenges of her career—she graduated in 2020, and more mural work followed.
“In the beginning, it wasn’t something I had initially thought I would go into, but I didn’t say no to any project,” she says. “I wanted to grow my art career, so I was just like, ‘Yes, I’ll do it.’”
Murals are a daunting task, she notes, as she has to scale up from a piece of paper to a full wall. Her yes-mentality has led her to works like a 50-by-20-foot noodle bowl mural she created in partnership with AsiaTown Cleveland and LJ Shanghai; a 20-by-8-by-9-foot shipping container that serves as a mobile library in AsiaTown; and her largest ye- a two-piece sidewalk mural with lily pads and a koi pond near Wade Early Learning Center, all in Cleveland.
Her most recent mural completed its run at Public Square in September 2025 on the back side of Rebol, as part of LAND Studio’s rotating art wall. There, Wong invited viewers into the Bellflower Salon, which stemmed from the question: “What if the new hairstyle is to shape your hair into bells?”
“That was one of those ‘I made it’ moments,” Wong says. “Anyone that walks out of Tower City—you’ll see that mural.”
Wong began partnering with the Ohio chapter of Asian Services in Action (ASIA Inc.) during the pandemic, creating coloring books, playing cards, posters and, later, vaccination stickers.
“Because I am Chinese myself, I knew I wanted to be part of the Asian community somehow and bring my art and my skills there,” she says.
Looking ahead, Wong is in the research phase, exploring ways to secure funding and new projects while continuing to expand her collection of prints. Her next dream is a large-scale collaboration with the RTA, creating art-wrapped buses—a vision inspired by the vibrant transit designs she admired during her trip to Hong Kong.
“I’m living the dream,” she says. “The fact that I went from originally watercolor drawing to mural works and now public health campaigns … I’ve come a long way since 2020.”
