Ophelia was born and raised in Toronto, Canada by her parents George and Josephine. Her father George knew a good thing when he spotted Josephine walking alone on the sidewalk, three months later they were married, nine and a half months later Ophelia ( from her father's love of Shakespeare) was born, closely followed by her sister Dinah (who's name was pulled from a hat of names supplied by the nurses and not named after a can of Ham as most suspected).
After too many bone chilling winters in Toronto, Ophelia packed two bags full of wool sweaters and moved to Los Angeles. Once there, she enrolled at Art Center College of Design, and graduated with a BFA (painting) and never looked back or picked up a brush since. She worked as a photographer illustrator for Raygun, Interview, Bleach, Lava and other magazines with names similar to household cleaners. After one too many run-ins with crazed musicians and non-paying publishers, she then moved into the Film Business as Creative Director for Strand Releasing. She also was Creative Director for the Slamdance, LAIFF, Outfest, and NoDance Film Festivals.
The siren call of the internet pulled her from the safety of the deck into the turbulent waters of the world wide web. There she found footing at voxxy.com, an interactive teen girl website and launched the site successfully, however she no longer uses the words "empowered", "grrrl" or "you go girl". After the first implosion of the web, she crawled back to the print world, licking her digital wounds to become the Creative Director of the Workbook, and while there garnered six awards for excellence in design.
The Dead Tree Society snail mailed her and told that "print is dead", and she again stuck her toes back into the "internets" as the Art Director of numerous websites, from coolmom.com, allykatzz.com, projectlore.com and many more. To fill her time in between uploads she also illustrates, her work appears in Lemon Poppyseed (Gestalten Press), Theme Magazine, 1000 Artist Journal Pages (Quarry Press), CSS Artistry (Peachpit Press), Source Illustration (HarperCollins International) and on online magazines such as Two Dogs (Milan) and 617B (Taiwan).
Ophelia writes about the human side of the internet machine on HowToSplitAnAtom.com. She is honored to have been asked to write for KCET, to write about the intersections of the internet and life in Los Angeles from her non-jaded view.
You can email her at: ophelia@opheliachong.org
Image: Ophelia Chong
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Hey O
After checking out the fires, I couldn't help reading your bio and split my sides laughing. Dr. bill to follow. @
Hey you. Yes, the benefit of having a sense of humor is making Life much easier to digest. :O)
Thanks for visiting Adele. :O)