Born and raised in Seoul Korea, I spent most of my grownup life outside of the country and having to have each different countries of motherland, passport country, country of residence and countries of ministry brought me awareness of tension between ‘Home-ness’ VS ‘Homeless-ness’, ‘ Alien’VS ‘Citizen’, ‘Nomad’ VS ‘Settler’, ‘Momentary’VS ‘Eternal’, ‘Secular’ VS ‘Sacred’.
I’ve been an artist since I was very young. I’ve been writing, painting, crafting, sculpting, installing and performing in different intensity in different seasons of my life.
Currently I’m residing in Pasadena, working in balcony studio, in the open air studio with canvas blind which is made with cut canvas fabric and push pins, adjustable with folding method and fix the angle with pushpins. I consider it as monad’s and Abraham’s tent built between Bethel and Ai. The center decorative piece is a small Korean ChoGakBo-like fabric collage I made many years ago. This lightfast sheer fabric allow the outdoor Sunlight enter through and make different colors illuminate like stained glass at a cathedral. So, this makes my space both nomadic and settled, open and closed, secular and sacred. I enter into the space (actually getting out of the apartment livingroom ) as a ritual, with an attitude of taking off my sandals before I the burning bush. I creat with Hanji ; Korean traditional paper made with mulberry bark, used for window, door, painting and hand crafts traditionally. I paint with acrylic, watercolor, gouache, ink to make different level of lightfastness on Hanji, recycled paper bags and watercolor papers. I tear, cut, collage and sew the paintings. Construct, Deconstruct, Reconstruct into 3 dimensional forms. Those are often look like Chogakbo; Korean traditional wrapping cloths, which is ordinary women’s arts made with discarded or left fabric after making clothes. It is showing anonymity, flexibility, resiliency of ‘ordinary’.
My goal in art making is following the Creator ‘Ex Nihilo’ as a small creator, through exploration on not only materials and object that I see and touch but also the surrounding has been created and being created. Co-creating with the Holy Spirit by paying attention to the movement of continuous creation, healing and renewal around me.
