Something about illustrator and designer Shirley Chong is undeniably Oakland. Strangers feel it when they meet her. San Francisco friends witness it when they make plans with her. And Chong recognizes it, though she’s not quite sure what to attribute it to.
It might be her look. She describes herself as “a darker-skinned Asian woman with a shaved head most days and very visible tattoos.” In Minnesota, where she lived for two and half years working on apparel design for Target, that didn’t exactly fit in—people openly stared at her. Back in Oakland where she was born and raised, no one bats an eye.
What might be most Oakland though, is her demeanor.
“I’m very blunt and honest,” she says. “I think sometimes I lack a certain amount of tact in the way I speak to people—not out of disregard for their feelings, but just because I think it’s efficient.”
This seems plausible when one first sees Chong’s work. Her illustrations are unapologetically weird, a touch sinister and shockingly bright. A face that’s half infant/half old man with a Trollz-doll updo cries neon pink tears. An air-brushed, squishy caterpillar in Doc Martens holds up a photo of Edgar Allen Poe, framed by the words “Goth Caterpillar” in a green, metal-band font. Even her client work—for national brands like Vice, Spotify and Atlas Obscura and local ones like The Fillmore, Noise Pop and Oakland’s Low Bar—don’t exactly put you at ease. She openly describes her work as “ugly.”
This all might be blunt, yet it lacks the hurt that bluntness usually implies. Chong’s words and work possess an inherent optimism. They’re quick to make one laugh. They may come out a little unrefined but they originate from a place of joy, even compassion.
For example: “After we all die, you’re already dead.”
Immediately followed by, “Just get what you want now out of the way.”
This is Chong’s particular brand of inspiration: Acknowledge the facts. Have some fun. Don’t take it all too seriously. It’s the same ethos of her Goth Caterpillar, who serves as an antithesis to a butterfly’s more perfect, finite state.
“It moves slow and it’s like: Don’t wait for this transformation,” she says. “Just be happy with who you are.”
Chong has embodied that idea during the course of her career, which took her from studying fashion design at the California College of the Arts into corporate apparel design and then, around 2017, into full-time freelance illustration work. That’s when she became Cheeky Chong.
The name came about more by circumstance than intention. As she was building her website, a professional dog trainer in Minnesota named Shirley Chong appeared to have SEO dibs. So Shirley Chong the illustrator became Cheeky Chong the brand, plucking “Cheeky” out of her imagination mostly because it was funny. It’s worth noting that today she tops results in Google queries.
A few things have come about in her life that way—uncalculated, opportunistically. After toying with the desire to experience living abroad, she moved to Mexico City in September 2022 when a long contract conveniently wrapped up. Of her many tattoos, the number of which she’s lost count of, quite a few were plucked from flash sheets, including a mythical Mexican creature whose history she didn’t really know. She feels a bit bad about that one.
Her musical taste, building on the foundation of a youth spent volunteering at Berkeley’s 924 Gilman St., is proudly non-discriminatory, ranging from Dolly Parton to local Oakland favorite Shannon and the Clams. She can’t pick a particular genre to declare loyalty to or even one to hate, because there’s always the possibility that “if you don’t like it right now, you could grow into it.”
So perhaps the most blunt thing about Chong is the way her curiosities lack precision. It’s a similar state for her future plans. Instead of setting expectations for herself—she finds them limiting—she’s open to the infinite possibilities of what might come along.
“Aspiration is kind of like a wasted energy,” she says. “I like just liking where you are.”
Where Chong is today reflects a circuitous path. She joins our Zoom meeting from her childhood bedroom in Oakland—in a matter of weeks she’ll be moving back to be closer to her family. She also really misses the food. Mexico City couldn’t quite nail “the flavors of home.” She jumps to soften the edges of her feedback, to clarify it’s not the city’s fault. The food there is amazing; the East Bay is simply one of the best places to eat Asian food in the U.S.
Chong will also likely find her way back into the region’s independent print scene, which has embraced her and so many artists, wholly and completely.
“I feel like [in] these spaces, [the] baseline is, we just give you respect and appreciation regardless of your gender or sexual orientation or any part of your identity,” she says. “I feel like that’s an energy throughout this culture.”
Chong frequently prints at Tiny Splendor, a press and publisher based in Berkeley and Los Angeles. With production support from San Francisco’s Silver Sprocket, that’s where she printed CHAD KAWASAKI ULTRA 3000, a zine in which a half-man/half-jet ski—formerly a frat boy—engages in underwater death battles for the entertainment of the rich elite. The pandemic-era project was born out of Chong’s indignant intrigue with Elon Musk’s brain chip-implanting Neuralink project. The pairing of humans and jet skis, in her mind, was “really stupid” but also “way cooler.”
Projects like this reflect Chong’s draw toward illustration and away from the corporate work that defined her early career, which thankfully paid the bills but eventually burned her out.
“There’s more freedom in illustration,” she says. “You get to play around with not just this larger story but the characters within it—how they interact with each other. It’s more nuanced, and I have more control creatively, too, which is nice.”
If there is any kind of future plan for Chong, “playing around” might just be it. She’s considering, noncommittally, how to adapt CHAD KAWASAKI into a screenplay. Birds are a new fascination. Working with musicians and music venues is a dream she’s both fulfilled and continues to have. What’s next, to put it bluntly, is not really a matter of concern.
“I am already doing what I want to do,” she says. “And that should lead me to a future that I should enjoy.”
Enjoy this Spotify playlist curated by Shirley Chong for EBX.
