Ezra Li
Raised by Wolves
Born in 1974 in the black mountains of North Carolina, Ezra Li spent his formative years growing up in the dense asphalt maze known as Brooklyn, New York. Early summers were spent sucking up Americana on yearly cross country road trips, seeing such sights as the St. Louis arch, the Ohio snake mound, mesa verde, four corners and many more.
Ezra Li was the spawn of an artistic environment- his mother a painter and a poet, his step-father a painter, his father a potter and a designer, his step-mother a designer and watercolorist, his grandfather a clown, writer, illustrator, painter and circus performer.
To attend school, Ezra Li moved to the SF, bay area in 1990. He studied at The California College of Arts and Crafts from 1992 until 1996, when he earned his B.F.A. in Painting. He worked under Raymond Saunders, Jack Mendenhall, & Mary Snowden.
Ezra has shown his work extensively throughout the Bay Area in such galleries and museums as I I I Minna Street, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Upper Playground, Balazo Mission Badlands Gallery, Richmond art center, Inferno Gallery,Gallery A.D. in San Jose, I.C.U. Art in Los Angeles and numerous warehouse gallery spaces. Examples of his work have appeared on flyers and album covers for local parties and groups such as Balanceman, the Bay Area Art Collective and Cat Five. He is staff artist for Thermal Recordings, Nutmeats Recordings, and Oaklyn records - three Oakland based record companies. He has also published work in ANARCHY magazine (winter/spring 2005/2006) WIRED magazine (october 2003), The Stranger (july 2004), GQ Spain, PRINT Magazine (June/July 2001),and GRAFFITO (by Michael Walsh, 1996). Eismont's work resides in hundreds of private collections across the globe.
Ezra has worked as a musician and producer with the band CatFive since its inception in 2000, and he continues to produce music under the moniker of Dj Darkat.
Ezra is currently involved with the San Francisco based Gestalt Collective, a group of collaborative muralists. Together they produced a site specific mural for the Y.B.C.A.'s "Bay area now" show in 2005. He has worked with many other artists, including Doze Green, Jon 156, Dave Choe, Rhode Montijo, Christopher Reuss and Sol Lewitt. .
