Originally from Taiwan, Anna Hsu
arrived in Cleveland – by way of
Colorado and Chicago –
in 1978 when her husband accepted a
transportation engineering job at the
Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating
Agency. In their search for a place to live,
the couple drove around Shaker Heights.
“We really liked the look and environment
of Shaker, and we were very impressed by
the street design,” Hsu says.
Hsu would eventually land a job
with Kaiser Permanente as a clinical
technologist, and later work for
Cleveland Clinic as a lead medical
technologist, which was the start of a
30-year career.
Hsu’s creative side began to blossom
in 1995, after signing up for Chinese brush
painting lessons at the Cleveland Chinese
Academy, where her two sons studied
Chinese language and culture. She would
work on her art assignments during the
evening after putting her sons to bed.
“Surprisingly, my skill in painting
bamboos took off before long and I was
really fascinated by all the variations in
the gestures of bamboo leaves, trunks,
and twigs. I never tired of working on
these pieces,” she says.
Last year marked
Anna Hsu’s 50th year in
the United States.
She’s been creating oil and watercolor
paintings for 25 of those years, and she has
no intention of slowing down.
By Nate Paige
Photographed by Angelo Merendino
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