for the love of calendars

Growing up, we used to have a calendar in every room of the house. These poster-sized calendars were given out to customers by Korean businesses.  My Korean grandparents lived with us, and it was my grandfather who was the biggest fan of these calendars.  They were used as his appointment books, so it was commonplace to see circled dates and Korean notes on the side. 

My family would have a small stash of these free calendars rolled up and ready to give to visiting friends and family.  When I moved into my own place, not a year went by without my grandfather or mother offering me a new calendar.  I would try to politely decline, but then my husband would make a nice comment about the calendars.  And this always led to,  "Oh, you like?!  I give you two."

It's been 13 years since my grandfather passed away.  I still think of him whenever I see a Korean calendar.  If he was alive today, he would be the first to receive my new calendar that I finished this weekend.  And I know he'd be pleased.  (Although I would have to supersize the dates for him!)

Unlucky number 4?

I'm not superstitious, but my Korean grandmother was one of the most superstitious people I've ever known.  She would scold me for whistling, leaving the fan on while asleep (fan death, google it), or attempting to kill a daddy longlegs in the house.  Most Korean superstitions are rooted in the fear of misfortune and death.  Probably the most widespread superstition in Asia is the fear of the number four, otherwise known as tetraphobia.

Much like Westerners' take on the number "13," Asians believe that the number "4" is extremely unlucky.  In Asian languages, the number four sounds like the word death.  So, naturally, avoiding the number four means you're doing your part in escaping death.  This superstition is so pervasive, floor number four is even skipped in buildings.  And I feel sorry for those who were born on April 4, 1944.  Multiple fours in a row is like a death wish.

Now you can imagine what I was thinking when I was checking my Etsy stats this week.  4444 admirers and 443 sales!  I can practically hear my grandmother gasp from heaven.  But, so far this week, the most unfortunate thing that has happened is our kitty chewing up my computer's power cable.  Maybe the fact that I survived this ominous numerical event without major tribulation is a testament to how lucky I really am.  I have, after all, left the fan running on many summer nights. 

my week

we hiked the wilson river trail in the tillamook forest, about 50 miles west of portland

picked up textured treasures along the way and visited the sleek forest center

[view from a 40 ft lookout tower]

latest craigslist find: '80s patio furniture set for $10

nothing a little scrubbing and paint can't fix

dinner with the hubby at the koi fusion [korean and mexican] cart

k-dog: kosher hot dog with kimchee sauerkraut, bulgogi, seaweed flakes, and japanese mayo

"open sky"

6 x 6 painting on birch panel

Artists I like: Il Lee

© Art Projects International; Courtesy of artist and Art Projects International, New York

New York-based artist Il Lee creates beautiful works of art on paper and canvas using only ballpoint pen.  In many ways, Lee's pen drawings remind me of traditional Asian ink drawings.  The simplified subjects are captured by spontaneous, yet well-practiced strokes.  And negative space plays a significant role in compositional balance. 

© Art Projects International; Courtesy of artist and Art Projects International, New York

© Art Projects International; Courtesy of artist and Art Projects International, New York

© Art Projects International; Courtesy of artist and Art Projects International, New York

It's always difficult to assess art on a computer screen, so here is a photo of Lee's large-scale works hanging in a gallery space.  This should give you a better idea of the magnitude of his ballpoint pen handiwork. 

© Art Projects International; Courtesy of artist and Art Projects International, New York

There is also this short video of Lee's art put together by San Jose Museum of Art.  I have to say that it does make my hand hurt just watching it.  It's amazing to think that Lee has been using ballpoint pen in his art for over 30 years! 

My Week

added a couple new pieces to the shop // this one is called Escape

leisure reading // book review to come

my friend brought back goodies from thailand // the oversized billfold is perfect for brushes

princesses, a castle, and the imagination of a child

started pinning // now you can see more of my favorite finds here

Show and Tell: Korean treats

My mother brings food whenever she comes over for a visit.  Many times it's an oversized jar of kim chee that she made the day before.  Accompanying the kim chee is usually some kind of snack for each member of the family.  Dried fish, for example, is normally given to me, and sweet rice cakes are a treat for the girls. 

I  love the colors of rice cakes, especially the pale pink.  Each color is a different flavor, and inside of each rice cake ball is sweet bean.  Yum.  I've never made my own, but I found this recipe today.

Here's the dried fish that my mom recently brought over.  It's coated in honey and sesame seeds.  If you look carefully, you can see the bones of the fish.  So, there's definitely a crunchy factor to this snack.  Not a fan favorite in the household, but I enjoy it. 

And then there's the guilty pleasure treat- Choco Pies. 

Choco Pies are essentially a Korean version of the moon pie.  They look sweeter than they actually are, but maybe that's me trying to rationalize eating one.

The packaging is classic.  Normally I steer clear of packaging like this in a market, but I am not as discriminating when it comes to international food products.  A double standard, I know, but I can't help but be amused by phrasing like "It's Now."

Show and Tell: new stuff

Here are a few items I got this week that I'm excited about. 

1.  Manimal Fringe Booties.  I have been drooling over these for a long time now.  These shoes are handmade by Kristen Lombardi in her Brooklyn studio.  As luck would have it, I found a brand new pair on eBay in my size! Check out all of Manimal's fantastic styles here, which includes the most adorable baby moccasins.

2.  Embroidered apron. My mother recently took a trip to Korea. She loved the embroidered aprons that the flight attendants were wearing and brought one home for me.  There are straps that cross in the back, and it's a button closure versus a tie.  I like the full coverage, but it'll be sad when the apron gets its first stain.  It just seems too pretty to be used as a grease guard.

3.  Canon A35F.  My vintage camera collection keeps growing.  This is my latest addition.  It cost me $12.50 at a thrift store.  It just needed a little cleaning and new batteries, but it looks to be in great shape.  Currently I have film loaded in four different cameras.  I'm anxious to see how the roll in the Canon A35F turns out.

The art of pojagi

[image sources: Jung Yul Park, London Korean Links, Sri Threads]

A pojagi is a Korean wrapping cloth, normally hand-pieced together from fabric scraps.  For many centuries, pojagi wrapping cloths have been used in common and royal homes.  In this post, I mentioned digging out from the cedar chest the pojagi my grandmother gave me (top right photo).  My grandmother was a teenager when she made it, so I'm guessing it dates back to the 1920s.

When she first showed me the pojagi, she pointed to the center and said the flower was one of her first embroidery works.  I was amazed by the precise and even stitching.  Embroidery has a long history in Korea, and it's not uncommon to see it adorning household items and clothing.  I recently read here about a debt that a Korean ruler owed the emperor of China during the medieval times.  The emperor requested that the most skilled Korean embroiderers be sent to his court, and this settled the debt.

Whenever I see a tied pojagi, it brings back a lot of childhood memories of my grandmother wrapping containers of food and articles of clothing.  I didn't realize there was such an international following of the art of pojagi until just a month ago!  I was browsing art blogs one morning when I came across two separate posts on pojagi. The Brooklyn-based textile gallery, Sri,  posted these beautiful images on their blog:

And here's a video on pojagi that the Rhode Island School of Design put together.  If only they offered  a class like this when I was in school!

Show and Tell: Keepsakes of my cedar chest

I have a cedar chest that my mother-in-law bought me when I was newly married.  Today, I was reorganizing my sewing paraphernalia, which was all stacked on top of the cedar chest.  It has been at least a couple of years since I've opened the chest, so going through it this afternoon was a joyous rediscovery of old, treasured things. 

I store my wedding dress in the chest, and next to the white satin gown was this little yellow knit dress that I wore as an infant.  I can tell it was loved as there is a nickel size hole near the hem, and the inside tags are worn and unreadable. 

Another keepsake from my childhood was my brother's baby blanket, which I've always adored.  I based the first baby blanket I made for my daughter on the sweet checkered design.

As I dug deeper into the chest, I was thrilled to find this quilted wrapping cloth that my grandmother gave me several years ago.  She was just a teenager when she made it, embroidery and all.

My grandmother passed away a year ago this time, so this piece is very sentimental to me.  I don't embroider as much as I would like to, but it was serendipitous that I had worked on a little piece this morning before finding my grandmother's embroidered work.

While rifling through piles of fabric, I found some sawtooth star blocks that I handquilted years ago.  I thought that I would spruce them up by adding embroidered designs.  This is the first piece I completed this morning.

Bird's eye view of city parks

These aerial photographs of parks were taken by Hosang Park of Seoul.  The images remind me a lot of the kid boardgame, Life.  I can just imagine pushing a little plastic car full of blue and pink people through the manmade thoroughfares.

Although I find the photographs to be amusing, they are also unsettling.  It's the brilliant yin and yang of Park's photographs.  The images are of parks, yet they are void of people.  The structures are appealing yet artificial at the same time. . . the world has become man's playground indeed.

Celebrating the tradition of turning a year older on New Year's Day

Every New Year's Day, my family gets together and eats dduk guk (rice cake soup).  It is believed that by eating one bowl of the soup on the first day of the new year, a year of life is gained.

Dduk guk is one of my favorite Korean soups.  It is definitely comfort food for me.  If you're wondering what the dark, greenish ingredient is in the soup, it's laver (seaweed).  Yum!

Another tradition that we celebrate on New Year's is bowing to parents and elders. Girls get dressed in traditional Korean garbs called hanboks.  The dresses tend to be quite colorful and ornate, and I've never seen two alike in our family.

As children bow to their elders (basically anyone older than them) and give well wishes for the new year, the family members in return reward them with money.  It's a tradition that the young and old look forward to in our family. 

New work- "Fiddleheads in the Woods"

As a child, my family (cousins and all) would take day trips to the mountains to pick fiddleheads. I can still recall the woodsy smell of our station wagon after coming back from our excursions. 

Fiddleheads are used in Korean cooking.  My grandparents used to lay all of the picked fiddleheads on the ground outside to dry.  Here is a picture of what they look like in a package.

photo source: maangchi.com

I realize they look more like dried worms, but they are tastier than they look!

This week, I created a new mixed media piece called Fiddleheads in the Woods. Normally I am inspired as I work.  So it wasn't until after I drew the graphite treeline silhouette and the patterned clouds that I decided to add ferns to the art work.

For more information on materials used in Fiddleheads in the Woods, you can check out my Etsy shop here.  And, as of today, I decided to close my Big Cartel gallery and just showcase all of my work on Etsy.  So now you can see all my current works in the nifty sidebar widget at top. 

Squid for dinner and your walls

Squid is one of my favorite things to eat, especially when it's cooked with spices in a stir fry.  (Check out this recipe here.)  I have noticed lately a more popular interest in squid, especially in the area of art.  I'll be the first to admit that they are not cute creatures, but there is something so intriguing about their form and movement.  Whether you can stomach them on a dinner plate or not, consider trying them on a wall.

Mary Carlson, crocheted squid, 2001. Bill Maynes Gallery.  Source: www.art.com

PistolesPress, Giant Red Squid, woodblock print, 6.5 in. x 6.5 in., 2009.

Max Estes, Strawberry Squid, 2008.

Zoe Keramea, Squid, paper and thread, 2002.

Reconnecting with my roots in "Returning home"

This week I ventured into watercolors, which is a medium I rarely use in my art. The work, entitled "Returning home," evolved from a stream of consciousness.  As I started laying down colors, the blended blues and greens reminded me of my home place, the Pacific Northwest. 

Reflecting on my own journey back to Portland and my Asian heritage, I added representational pieces to the work, including migrating cranes, growing roots, and a patterned sphere inspired by vintage silk fabrics. 

I really enjoyed working on this piece and am looking forward to creating more mixed media works with watercolors.  To see this and other works I've created the last few weeks, visit my shop site here.  

The art of folding paper

Yesterday I posted new art work that was inspired by my grandmother's love of folding paper.  When I was a little girl, she would sit with me and show me how to fold a square piece of paper into different objects and creatures.  My favorite was the canoe, which I would try to float on water.

My grandmother started gifting her paper treasures to those closest to her, 1000 cranes at a time.  When I opened my business two years ago, she brought 3000 cranes to the store opening.  She was 95. 

My grandmother was folding paper cranes even in the last moments of her life.  She passed away in May, but her love and inspiration will always live on through tens of thousands of paper cranes.

My past and present captured in embroidery

I have a bag of beautiful vintage silk fabrics that my grandmother gave me years ago.  The fabrics are actually garment remnants from traditional Korean dresses called Hanboks.

One day, I had this idea to embroider images of Portland on the silk fabric.  I had dabbled with embroidery before, but more with lettering than imagery.  I decided to pick up a hoop and a embroidery stitching tool at a craft store, and I'm so glad I did!  The embroidery went so much faster!

I was able to complete my first Portland embroidered image that first evening.  I probably should have sketched it out first on the fabric, but I'm super impatient when it comes to prep work.   Hopefully you recognized it's the Hawthorne Bridge!

All I have to do now is wrap it around a stretched canvas frame so that it's ready to hang.