Chamblee, September 2, 2025 — Inside the Chinatown Mall, a new gallery is quietly reshaping how Asian American art and identity are experienced in the South. The space, called Blooms Emporium, is the creation of Taiwanese American artist Andrew Bloom, who sees art not just as expression, but as philosophy and community.
Bloom, who has spent years experimenting with the intersections of creativity and cultural identity, says his goal is to build a space where Asian American stories are told through brushstrokes, paint, and conversation. His classes, which fuse traditional Asian motifs with Western techniques, invite participants to explore their own backgrounds while learning the fundamentals of art.
But Bloom’s vision extends beyond classes. The gallery is home to rotating exhibitions featuring works from Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) artists across the region. Paintings, sculptures, and installations reveal stories of migration, belonging, and reinvention. “By being vulnerable and sharing my own story,” Bloom said, “I hope to create a space where others feel they can do the same.”
That mission spills outside the gallery walls monthly, when Bloom launches a monthly Chinatown Market in Atlanta. The market, designed to showcase Asian culture and creativity, will feature local artists, food vendors, and performers. For Bloom, it is both an act of cultural preservation and an avenue for economic development.
Blooms’s vision stretches beyond a single Saturday event. Through his Blooms Emporium gallery at Ponce City Market, he teaches classes in Chinese watercolor, anime-style acrylics, figure drawing, and clay. The Bloom Emporium Chinatown expands that mission, offering weekly art workshops that invite participants — many of them second-generation Asian Americans — to reconnect with heritage through creativity.
“It’s not just about painting a koi fish,” Blooms said. “It’s about asking: what does the koi mean to you, in your story? Art is how we find ourselves.”
The programming has attracted both beginners and seasoned artists, reflecting Blooms’s belief that vulnerability — whether in sharing a sketch or a personal history — can be liberating.
For Atlanta’s Asian American Pacific Islander community, the timing feels urgent. Though the city has one of the fastest-growing AAPI populations in the South, cultural spaces often struggle for visibility. The Chinatown Mall, built in the 1980s, once thrived as a gathering point but in recent years had grown quieter, overshadowed by the sprawl of Buford Highway’s newer strip malls.
Community leaders say the timing is right. With Atlanta’s Chinatown Mall seeking new ways to engage younger generations, Blooms Chinatown Market is part of a broader effort to reimagine the space as a hub of cultural connection.
“Art has always been about more than aesthetics,” Bloom said. “It’s about creating connections that remind us we belong to each other.”
At Blooms Chinatown Emporium, those connections are beginning to take shape — one class, one exhibition, and one story at a time.
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