A Needed Divorce
Last month I pulled out all the old work I created months and years ago to take inventory for my first market here. Feeling a bit out of practice, I laid out all my pieces the night before to test how everything would display. Seeing it all at once, I found my paintings and the colors within them fatigued and bland. My eyes searched for their magic and glow, like trying to find the flavor in an unseasoned piece of dry chicken that’d been chewed far too long. I did feel grateful, however, that I had a few new ceramic pieces I was genuinely proud of to balance out the collection of overplayed reruns.
I wasn’t sure what to expect with this sale. It was a small market, specifically catered to the Korean community–I thought, are there even enough Koreans here to make up a crowd?? I packed up my things and told myself it’s more about getting out there than anything else, but still set a soft goal to recoup the cost of my new 10x10 tent. Within the first hour, I well surpassed that and was quite impressed by the number of people who showed up on a day with record heat and questionable air quality. As old paintings and prints found their way to new homes, I felt noticeably lighter and subconsciously made mental space for new works to replace them with time.
Halfway through the event, a woman came up to me and asked about the meaning of a screenprint I had made years ago in grad school. Caught off guard by her too-depthy-of-a-question for a craft market, I stammered something brief. While I’m sure we were both a bit lost in the lack of elegance in my response, she still bought the print but left me thinking about the meaning behind my aesthetic and the purpose of my work. This isn’t to say I’ve never articulated these things to myself before, but after a six-month hiatus from painting, the thoughts hit differently.
My final project from screenprinting 101
I still grapple with commercial versus big-A Art and how they both serve as a reflection of me and the type of artist I want to be. If I’m being honest, there was always a discomfort in showing up to these fairs under my artist name. While the brightly painted oranges and peppers are, in a sense, a part of me, they are not the big-A Art I’m pursuing long-term, nor do I particularly want to sell any big-A Art at a fair such as this. The paintings of fruits and vegetables as well as my ceramics are functional, fun, and so very sellable. They are my hands, but they are not my soul.
The week that followed the market, my inability to answer that woman’s simple question forced me to rethink and rewrite my bio. During that process, it dawned on me that I have the agency to separate the work I create for myself from the commercial work, to hold two different spaces in complete authenticity. This brings me to introduce my new endeavor: OBANG House of Hues, a small business to sell my commercial paintings and ceramics, tied together by elements of obangsaek, the Korean color philosophy and pattern that dictates the aesthetic and design of my work. While most of my time is now dedicated to starting up this little business, under this new name, I’ve simultaneously found more space for my big-A Art than before, or at least I feel more assured that it’s not being compromised or forgotten. With this clear delineation, I feel the deepest sense of clarity and excitement to freely pursue my work in all its forms.
As I reflect on the past six months I’ve spent away from painting, I realize the time admittedly weighed me down; as I chronically overthought what my work needed to amount to, I responded by doing nothing. Then, last week on a slow Monday morning, I really let myself sit within the recent divorce of my two creative endeavors. Finding levity, I said to myself, ‘just paint a fucking tomato, it’s not that serious.’ And it really wasn’t. So, I painted a tomato. Then the first layers of peppers followed, and later some onions. Their colors felt so rich and full of lustre, they gained enough depth to peel themselves off the stretched white canvas, dizzying my eyes as they pirouetted before me in a grand dance of celebratory return.
From the notebook
I was wasting so much time at the studio starting blankly at my bisqueware wondering how to glaze. I then had the novel idea to buy a notebook to sketch out my ideas beforehand… game changer!
WIP
More vegetables to add to the collection and my ideal dish for eating pizza—a space to contain the concoction of olive oil, dried red pepper and flake salt!
Media musings
I’ve been thinking a lot about play, how to bring more of it within my daily practices, and how not to take my creative pursuits so seriously all the time. Doing anything simply for the joy of it seems like a lost practice in adulthood, and I’m determined to find a way back to it!
July Whereabouts
Slipped in before the wildfires
Northern sunset
Blueberry picking!
My favorite color combo
Smoky skylines
Finally using my studio
Stamped official with my maker’s mark
