About
Tjokorda Gde Arsa Artha was born in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia on June 6, 1960. Growing up in a Balinese royal family, he studied all the traditional arts of his homeland from an early age. Arriving in New York in the early eighties, he attended the Art Students League in New York City on scholarship. Through the Asia Society of New York and other organizations, he has frequently participated in programs representing the visual and performing arts of Bali, including music and dance performances, workshops, and demonstrations of Balinese techniques in painting, carving, crafts, and dance.
As a fine artist, he was a member of the Ratna Warta Artists' Association of Ubud Bali and has exhibited in Bali's Puri Lukisan Museum in Ubud, and widely throughout New York City and the Hudson Valley region, and has been commissioned by many art collectors. In the mid-eighties, at the 1st Annual Open Studio Show at the Asian-American Arts Centre in New York City, Fox 5's Big Apple Minute chose his painting titled "Harmony of Nature" to represent Asian art on the segment "Cross Cultural Experience." In the late eighties he was commissioned by UNICEF to do a painting for The Flags of the United Nations, titled "The Little Cowboy." In July 1997, he was a grant award recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. In Spring 2003, his work was displayed in a solo exhibition at a gallery in the East Hamptons, New York. He participated in a fundraising exhibition at National Art Club in New York City. In 2009, he had his work displayed in a duo-artist exhibition at New York City's Skylight Gallery in Chelsea. He participated in a membership art exhibition at the Rockland Center of the Arts in 2011. The most recent showcase of his work was at The Sanctuary in Nyack, New York.
Currently, Gde resides in Pomona, New York, with his wife and two sons. As the Director and Curator of the Pomona Cultural Center, where many of his own pieces are displayed, he organizes art shows, music and dance performances, poetry readings, and workshops. Through this venue he has become involved with many local artists, and supports the effort to promote and maintain the artistic community throughout the Hudson Valley area. From Fall 2007 to 2010, he had been a professor at Bard College as the instructor of their Balinese gamelan orchestra, Chadra Kenchana, participating in conjunction with Giri Mekar, the community gamelan orchestra in the Hudson Valley, developing and directing performances. He remains active in promoting the artwork of local artists, as well as the art and culture of Bali, through the performing and visual arts.