My meal train friends were incredible, and they've already seen a bunch of these pics, but I will never forget their outpouring of generosity. You only have one first surgery, and I couldn't have asked for a better support system, both on the ground and remotely. Here I am with Hyeyung, once I had started PT but couldn't drive yet. She had a gig a few hours away in NY, so she extended her stay and rented a car so she could take care of me in person for a few days. She cooked more food than I knew a layperson could (she is a professional musician and an incredible cook, though I find that talented hands in one arena pick up very easily in others).
Once I no longer needed medical devices (even I was surprised that I was able to ditch my walker around day 5), Julianne and Mia came to pick up the extras that Tom had loaned, while returning things from our hanji week together during their training. The amount of teaching I did right up until surgery is like a fever dream; I look back at pictures and wonder what the hell I was doing, but that kind of unreasonable workload was part of why I had to get surgery in the first place.
I learned a tremendous amount in that initial recovery time, which I tried very hard to protect, but once I had to get active around show prep, it kind of all went to hell. Jim spared me from the kind of installation workload that I often have pre-show, but at a certain point I had to go in to confirm details. Joanne is always fabulous, and she's doing some secret magic that Jim designed, while he's setting magnet placement. Also around this time was when I found out that I was selected for this year's Cleveland Arts Prize.
They had a fancy steamer that I got to use until I handed off to a student worker because I was getting tired, and already been scolded by my PTs to cool it. Thankfully, Sarah drove me twice so that I could be there during install, and later for press. She always says her team is small but mighty and it's TRUE.
The second trip was overkill given my recovery. The morning was a live TV shoot, and I asked the camera guy if he worked out to be in shape to carry all the equipment, and he does! It was very weird to be talking to someone on my headphones through my phone while looking at the camera, so mostly I don't know where I'm supposed to be looking at any given time in the video. Also, I've been trained forever to NEVER look directly at the camera, so it was hard to break that habit.
After the TV shoot, another photographer arrived for an hours-long photo shoot, and while he was with me in the big gallery, a journalist was in the small gallery running an interview with Sara (the curator) and getting more footage of the show. Corey did a great job, and he taught me the insider lingo for people like him who have to do the interviews, writing, photography, and video.
After Sarah drove me back home, I was so hungry and tired but wanted to see Lisa, who had flown in from California to see my show and support me at the opening. The evening went a bit longer than we expected because her GPS took her far away to an Aimee Lane that I have never even heard of (a dead-end street 20 minutes away!), and I asked her to take me to the grocery store where I had accidentally left behind a bag of oranges the previous night because I was so distracted by how nice the CVS clerk was about my NYT story in print (I picked up two copies in two different places, both the last of the day, so that Kent would have one at the museum during the opening). I won't even get into the ridiculousness of the next day, but Lisa picked me up in the afternoon to drive back to Kent for the actual show opening.
The big surprise when we arrived, was being waylaid by yet another photographer, who said I was late! Late to what? Another shoot?!??! I had misunderstood Sarah when I asked the Kent photog not to come after my TV and photo shoot the prior day, and instead could come to the opening. I thought that meant he was going to shoot the opening! Instead, they had roped off the show and already set lights, waiting for me. No time for powder, which Sarah had saved me with the prior day. Thankfully, Bob was a super pro and VERY fast, and he did several shots to try and embed me into my art. Love it!
I was then dragged upstairs to the donor champagne toast and so touched by both Sarah's and Jillian's intros. Sarah had selected a dress not in the show that had just come out of the Oberlin show, which was auctioned quickly before we headed downstairs for the opening. Dr. Suyeon Ko kindly provided music for the event with almost no notice, such a pro! [this and the rest of the professional pics are by Andrea.]
I was overwhelmed seeing all of the different guests in the crowd. Here is my contractor Bob, who made it possible for me to move from an 850 square foot custom hanji studio to a custom hanji studio in my home. He has an amazing engineer's mind and eye, and has been critical in the past years, instrumental in designing a brand-new stainless steel hanji vat: the first on this continent. Lisa is talking to him because she is working on her own hanji studio, I am so excited! Note that she is holding all of my stuff: an envelope with a copy of the Times article, my bag that Runxiao brought back from Mongolia, and my phone somewhere.
Here are Rob and Joon-Li, Grace, and Patricia. Joon-Li has been a wonderful champion of my work, collector, and friend (I mean really hardcore: she took me to surgery and then back home, and organized my entire meal train!). She included an image of my piece she now has on the cover of her moving translation, No Hand Held Mine. Grace is the ED of the Sculpture Center; one of her first shows was mine, where she asked me to invite a student, and look at SR's career now, a star! Patricia is an artist coming out of a long architecture career—she astounded me with how excellent her care was immediately post-op, covering every last detail.
My dear friends Lisa and Yuko are directly responsible for choices I made in some of the show art, because they print at Zygote and are tremendously generous with feedback, advice, and kindness. They are the best people to be around when working in a studio, and Zygote is where I made most of the prints in the show (the rest were with Jessica!).
I could not believe that Wendy made it all the way to Kent during her first week back at school at Oberlin, where she is chairing the English department, and after her own physical therapy session, no less! Her new book drops in November, a month after our birthdays—I think I met a birthday sister at the end of high school from Spokane, but not again until two years ago when I met Pamela (who generously was a sponsor of this show and donated a large dress to the Kent collection, as well as a large book to Oberlin's). Wendy and I didn't figure out our bday connection until this last year.
This is where it all started: Nanette was the first art professor at Oberlin that I really connected with, who opened the entire world of artists' books to me. I was sad at the time that I had only met her in my final year of school, but that was when things all pivoted for me: I had been a straight-A high school valedictorian, but could not pull those grades in college—until I figured out what I actually wanted to study, with my entire self. I've watched her nurture and influence decades of students, including those who have become my dearest proteges, and create a space for books at Oberlin.
I don't remember her name, but she told me that she is an eighth grader. I was astounded by the range of people at this opening, we had over 300 guests, and it was hard not to burst into tears when I gave remarks, because once you get onto those steps and look out, you cannot deny the sheer number of folks and all of the familiar faces of the community that I've built and been folded into over the last 13 years. The last person to greet after receiving lines of people all night was Stephanie, who was a Morgan intern in 2010, when we built the VERY FIRST hanji studio. We were working on this wild dream of mine and now she's all grown up!
So very many other friends and colleagues, but I have to single out 3/5ths of the team: Joanne, the registrar, Sarah, the director, and Sara, the curator of the Kent State Univeristy Museum. Bianca was likely dealing with the books at the store, and Jim is always operating under the radar, but I love this group of people. We did it!
Lisa and I raced through the galleries after the guards started to lock up because she was so busy taking care of me and waiting for the crowds to dissapate that she didn't get to see the whole thing! Then she drove us back to get dinner and took me home. I thought I could finally get to bed and sleep, but then a friend mentioned the lunar eclipse. I ended up staying up at least another hour to see the peak of it at 12:12am. Lisa was only a mile away and on Pacific time, so we texted back and forth. She got this picture, it was going to get to 96%, a blood moon. We are not photographers so you only get a glimpse of the red but it was the perfect way to end the night.
This is what I saw from home, standing in front of my garage, running in and out of the house at various intervals, listening to crickets in the nighttime cacophony. The press tail since the NYT two-week rollout has been intense, with Korean TV (in English) sound check at 6:40am last week, and Korean radio (in Korean) sound check at 9:40pm two nights ago (I'll share that link later, they're still editing!). Sleep is ever elusive but Lisa reminded me yesterday via text to return to the present while I sobbed, held by Dolly, Linda, and Emmylou (Trio was my gift to myself after we lost Dolly). I needed that cry, and today had much more capacity to train Charity on my website backend.
There's so much more and yet this is all I can bear for now! My show is up through next May so I hope you can see it, I gave it everything I had. I will share more details at my artist talk on Oct 22—auditorium seats are limited (overflow seating will see me live on video, close to the show itself), so come early to get a seat!
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