You were born in the U . S ., lived for a time in Belgium and spent a great deal of your formative years in Korea . How do you feel these varied life experiences have influenced who you are as an artist today ?
My fast adaptation skills . I think it gave me an abilities to see things or situations from multiple perspectives I ended up spending a lot of time alone and reading a lots of books or drawing . I think I extensively started to draw when we had to move to Belgium . I did a lot of coloring books and practiced drawing by copying and recreating many animation and Disney characters . I am good at having fun alone . It was about that time I found a thirst to find my people . I thought , the world is so big , there ’ s got to be somebody that is like me , that understands me . I believe crossing borders has brought me the best and the most traumatizing experiences . So I think the core part of me was built then , like the main brain and ethics or style was almost defined after those experiences .
What was the scariest thing about rebelling against the strict aspirations of your parents and coming to the states ?
Not having anywhere to go back to and to be left out of my family forever . I was rebelling but I still had somebody who wanted to cook and provide shelter for me . But I knew if I decided to choose what I thought was right for me , that it would mean the end of the way of life I had known since childhood . As much I wanted to leave and find my path , what I really wanted was to simply be accepted . The biggest reason why I had to leave is because they just wouldn ’ t accept me as I am and kept pushing me to be their ideal daughter . But it never meant that I didn ’ t like them . I just couldn ’ t figure out the way of making both parties happy . I was scared to leave but I think the fear of ‘ having to live to be somebody that is not me , for the rest of my life ’ was greater .
You have worked in fiber art , in the fashion industry and a variety of other jobs - what was the biggest lesson you learned from this work journey ?
That I can learn from anything if I care . I think even little things , I tried to do my best . I tried to remember well , learn things by observing , be creative to boost productivity , like really putting myself on the line . My first manager in my first office job , she was very detail oriented and thorough . I am naturally very clumsy and scattered brain , but she was patient and kind enough to explain things to make them understandable for me . So even a little task with very little meaning , like one of my tasks was printing large artworks on multiple small papers and tape them together so that we can see the actual size . I really set all the lines perfectly so that it looked like one print , except for the tape . It was very rare for my team manager to see this assembled image , but when there were issues and they had to compare the image I created to the finished fabric , sometimes my team manager would remark that it looked really nice and was easy to compare but that I had too much time on my hands . ( Or like cutting fabric swatches all perfect ) know it ’ s stupid and I had to stay longer that day finishing other tasks , but I felt satisfied and knew at some point it would get noticed . I had to repeat that process a couple times before I could put the image together faster , but still perfect , and I didn ’ t have to stay longer at work . It could seem silly , but I think that is how I felt . But now I know it was a worthless act and I probably should have spent my time on doing something of value . But I also wouldn ’ t have realized this if I was not that thorough , haha . I just wanted to leave perfect and nice things behind . What I ’ m trying to say is that even if it seemed a little task , for some reason everything was meaningful to me so I always did my best .
82 THE CONE - ISSUE # 15 - 2018