The briefest bit at home

This is a misleading timeline because I attended the Cleveland Arts Prize ceremony right before I left for Michigan for my annual milkweed residency. But I'm going to pretend this is a section about one of the narrow windows I had at home this fall between incessant travel. I met Amber, a CAP recipient a few years ago, way back when I used to teach artists' books at CIA, where she still teaches. We both loved teaching Irena, the one student from those times that I am still in touch with. I love seeing her career blossom and admire her dedication to her family, hometown, and public art.

Two weeks later, I visited Oberlin for my artist talk at the museum for the show that I am part of right now that runs thru June 21, 2026. Kevin, the curator, very kindly pulled the Chinese landscape painting that is a huge part of my hanji trajectory. This is a piece of hanji that is pasted front side down so that the backside could be recycled as a colophon, even though it was never inscribed.

By Li Liufang in 1616, it's hard to see, but the entire ground was prepared with gold before the landscape was painted on top.

It reads more brown in the photos but it's still a lovely gold. Though different from the gold flecks that I wrote about for years, inspiring me to return to Korea to grab my first language by the tail before it escaped forever, it was still amazing to see it for the first time since the late 90s. Now that I know Arnold Chang, himself an incredible painter in the Chinese literati lineage, I also learned my misunderstanding of this entire scroll. He appraised this acquisition by Oberlin and when I asked if this was painted on Korean paper, he said likely not. So the whole story I believed, that it was painted on hanji, was incorrect! Only the colophon pastedown was hanji, and not particularly fancy paper, simply recycled from something else.

I also visited the art library quickly to see the display of my books from the collection. I was amazed to see that some of my earliest work from 1999 still retains so much of the essence of my books today. I'm also grateful to a donor for donating my large artists' book currently in the exhibit to the library!

Meanwhile, I had been working for a while at home on a new jiseung piece inspired by my summer visit to the Met's Korean gallery. I had a very clear vision of where this was going, and then it ended up not going there at all, but I'm still happy I have a new piece.

The lid was supposed to be a duck head and I worked so hard on it, ripping it out at least once, only to have it not work at all. But that's okay. These things happen, and this is still a handsome outcome of the process. Oh, and the campus visit was great! I was touched by all of the people who turned out; it's always exciting when more chairs need to be dragged out. I was happy to catch up with new and old friends and colleagues though it was not even close enough time to really catch up.