Paper and indigo in Baltimore

Once I got to Baltimore after an unexpected night spent next to Dulles, I went straight to meet Zofia, who is an adjunct teaching papermaking at MICA. I had learned in Minneapolis about Kyle Van Horn's dry boxes, so I wanted to take a look at the studio.

Always love wide shallow sinks in a paper studio, and look at all the storage below!

Clotheslines that I believe can retract but are high enough to leave as is.

Beater room with a Reina beater

Across from the beater

Two Lee McDonald presses, and both have catchment trays for water.

This is hilarious and the perfect little nook for refrigeration. After lunch with Rosa, I finally got to lay down and rest for the afternoon before going next door for dinner.

The next day I joined Rosa and her interns to harvest indigo seeds (yes, I helped, but I also took lots of photos because I know how useful it is to have working shots and you can't shoot and work at the same time).

She showed everyone what to look for in terms of how ripe the seed was and it was a beautiful day to work outside.

There is one row of indigo on this urban farm, which also grows food and flowers and who knows what else (I saw remnants of peppers, greens, and marigolds).

This will eventually become seed for Blue Light Junction to sell.

They bundled up the harvest to throw into the back of the car that I was driving for Rosa.

Outside of Blue Light Junction

I was glad to finally visit BLJ after so many years hearing about it from Rosa. A very special and beautiful place, created with so much love and mindfulness.

Rosa showed me the garden next door. That night, I drove to the burbs to see Kelsey and was happy to be so close to a Korean supermarket, where I stocked up a bit. The next morning, we took a long walk that destroyed my hip but I was excited to see a fox cross a big road.

I was so sleep deprived all week but managed to do the drive home in one day, remembering on the way that I would be heading through Pittsburgh, so I reached out quickly to Runxiao to see if she was around. We met at the Carnegie museum and I couldn't believe she had just finished a whole conference she organized and listening to her workload, I felt like, this is a friend who can truly understand me. She travels so much more than me and much further distances, but is always so cheerful and supportive when I see her. Then I missed one exit and was caught for 30 min in the snarl of Pittsburgh's ridiculous roads. A few days later, I gave a lecture and demo, and then a lecture nights later zooming into a Korean hanji seminar. I have one more public event this Wed at Kent State before I can finally be free of presenting myself to the world until January.

Korean Intangible Cultural Property Holders at Old Korean Legation Museum

This was a trip I knew would take me over the edge, yet one I felt I had to do. Duty bound, for sure. During government shutdown, it was the worst timing because I couldn't fly, which extended my trip by days since it's very hard on my body to drive so much, so I break it up. I was so glad to see Vagner on the way (well, kind of out of the way, but it was worth it to see him), but was scared for my life for the first 3 hours of a 4-hour drive since we had very bad snow/ice/whiteout conditions from Ohio to PA. I learned that adrenaline truly numbs pain, because I couldn't feel anything under my stomach that whole drive and wondered if the white I was seeing in front of me, rather than the car in front of me, meant that I had died and was driving into the light. After dropping all of my stuff in Baltimore, I commuted into D.C. to visit a weeklong exhibit at the Old Korean Legation Museum.

I knew from the summer, when my teacher, the national intangible cultural property holder (ICPH) of bamboo screen making Cho Dae-yong told me he was going to visit D.C. in November, that I had to go. I was very happy to see him, but the cost was steep for me on all levels (time, body, etc.). I was sad that this show was only up for a week, which included the work of many national ICPH and their apprentices. It spanned all three floors of this beautiful old house and there was something to see in every corner of the elegant space, but there was no time to really see it all or spend time with the work.

Here is an apprentice who served as the Korean to English translator, Won Bohyun, the organizer of the exhibit, and my teacher, in front of one of his screens. She had worked for years on this exhibit and I was sad that it was happening at a time when the stupid government was messing with their plans (they had to cancel their Smithsonian event even though the government had just reopened—though by then they had already changed their plans to spend an extra night in NYC).

This was my teacher's other piece in the show, a beautiful color combo of indigo-dyed bamboo and yellow silk. His daughter told me that she has been doing indigo dyeing on her own but no matter what she does, she cannot get the color to stay on her bamboo splints. He always sends his bamboo to the national ICPH of indigo dyeing in Naju to dye.

There were also beautiful videos on loop and this is a quick snap of him making his very large bamboo screens.

Here he is with his daughter, Cho Suk-mi. She took very good care of me for the next 12+ hours.

Because we were being herded on a tour and unable to stop or move around (it's not the kind of space amenable to large crowds looking at one piece in a corner), I couldn't get a close-up of her screen that is hanging on the green wall.

Instead of a ribbon cutting, they arranged for everyone to have a scroll of lovely Korean silk bound with silk maedeup (the knotting ICPH was there as well), and after counting down, they all unrolled their scrolls at the same time, which were printed with the show info. My sweet teacher immediately insisted I take one before the ceremony got going.

The former first lady of Maryland, Yumi Hogan, was there to commemorate the event, and I took a picture with her to show to Rosa, with whom I was supposed to be staying, since Yumi has been Rosa's mentor for years. She has a remarkable life story as well.

On the first floor I was glad to see the folding fans by the national ICPH and his son that I met on my last research trip, amidst many other pieces that the ICPH in attendance explained.

A child's hanbok on the bed with adult hanbok in the background. After the reception ended, the ICPH were being herded quickly downstairs and outside to a van waiting to shuttle them to dinner. My teacher's daughter insisted that I join, even though I assumed they had some fancy place reserved for a set number of people. She said there was room so I got into the van.

More folding fans!

The person who had been looking at this said that it was 19th century toilet paper. Once in the van, someone announced that we'd be eating at the hotel, and then I heard the driver say, it will take 45 mins to get to the hotel! At that point, I was horrified (I assumed they would be treated to dinner near the exhibit), and asked where the hotel was. Suk-mi said, right next to the airport. I said, DULLES?!?!? And then spiraled as I frantically started texting Rosa on 30% battery about when the last commuter train leaves DC and looked up hotel rates for the Hilton because there was no way I'd make it back to Baltimore that night. When I told Suk-mi, she said, stay with me! I have an extra bed! I had nothing for an overnight stay but knew that at least she would have all the skin care I would need.

Of course, I barely slept and then had to get up at 6:30am to have breakfast with her and my teacher (we had to wake him to come downstairs) in time for me to catch the hotel shuttle to the airport, where I could connect to the Metro and commute for 3 hours to get to MICA in time for a tour of the paper studio. Most of my time in the DMV was like that. But it was wonderful to see my teacher after 4 years and I so appreciated that he knew exactly what my role is, as a hanji person. I had felt guilty all this time for not finishing edits on a video of his process, or not comprehensively uploading all of my research photos of my study with him, and especially for not making more bamboo screens. But that all dissipated when he introduced me to everyone and had no expectation that I was supposed to be a bamboo screen maker. I'm so grateful to people who really know and understand me, and give me space to be me. I'm sorry I won't be able to visit Korea next year to see his new gallery/studio/teaching building in Tongyeong but it was worth trekking to DC to greet him instead.

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.

October Milkweed Residency

Milkweed Residency always feels like coming home. This year, last minute, we reverted to the original trio of Pati (at left), Tim, and me. Jill is in the background here helping us harvest.

Ticks were very busy this year so we stayed in the horse pasture and nearby. Saw lots of dogbane as well!

I was so happy to see Jill and she was very kind to Lester. He was their one remaining pet but weeks later, he was gone, too.

I steamed immediately after processing the harvest and later separated the pods into "burst" and "not burst" bags. Thank goodness I realized on the way home that I could detour to Oberlin and throw both bags in the freezer next to the paper studio, and leftover stalks there as well. I love efficiency (and there is NO way those pods would have fit into my home freezer!).

This is a bit out of sequence but it's after stripping stalks that I steamed. I did much of it on the first day but then left the rest over a day or two.

I tried to work around meal prep and meal times to get the batch stripped before throwing it into the woods.

This year we had a field trip to Kalamazoo! I had missed the Washi Transformed show that has been traveling for years in a few different locations, so I was eager to finally see it. Yuko's piece is on the left of the title wall and more pieces were distributed through both galleries.

Eriko Horiki's illuminated washi

Yuko Nishimura's folded washi

We also had a visit to the book arts center and caught up with Jeff. I think afterwards I went straight to bed but I can't remember exactly the sequence of my naps. I could sense we were all slowing down in our own ways and while I was greedy for their company, I was also glad to turn in early at night. After the harvest and Kzoo trip were done, I was curious to see Pati's paper studio setup for the year, and loved seeing her watermarks both on her mould,

and stored on the fridge!

This reminded me that I also want to get a vat warmer (not what this was made for but an excellent investment).

I was jealous of their giant nasturtiums! I planted mine from seed for the first year ever and they were tiny, but then again, they were in planters.

And, of course, part of the joy of Pati's and Tim's company is shared meals. This time I did a big batch of japchae, which I haven't made in years there, and it sustained us over a few more meals. Pati did a bang up job with her first kongjang/kongjorim, since I get paranoid now about not cooking with enough protein (I can't put meat in my japchae anymore so I wanted protein somewhere).

On the way in, I stopped in Ann Arbor to lunch with Cathy and meet her new wonderful mentee, Trina. On the way out, I got to see Katherine and visit the art library and museum, where I did a quick visit to the Korean gallery. There's not much to say about my annual Michigan visit because it's always the same: nourishing, rejuvenating, full of wonderful friends, and my favorite papermaking fiber. I'm so grateful to my impeccable hosts, who are incredibly good humans and artists who work with genuine integrity while staying curious and open, always, while creating beauty every single day.