87. Possibility

How we realize it. An illustration for Golden Hof, filling gaps, being an antenna.

The girls.

It’s only January of 2025 and it is already the end of things.

I grew up in Southern California, the palms tall and windblown. We were fifteen and a half, driving to Laguna Beach. The way I remember it is that it was dusk and there was a long road curving around the sea. Lights moving on it like pilgrims, or ants. Ant pilgrims. We went to a café that was open late. I recall amber lighting and lots of dark wood. We ordered Mango Ceylon tea and sat at a tiny round table surrounded by a bohemian hum of people. I felt so grown up; there was a thrill in my stomach. The night deepened and a little barefoot girl in angel wings danced in a corner. I marveled at such a childhood.

Los Angeles, where my family still lives, and which David Lynch loved, has been burning. Lynch had a thing for fire but I don’t think he ever underestimated it. Ash and darkness was part of the deal; he let it go through him, and something beautiful remained, or was forged. Maybe there’s no difference; maybe it was there before.

Alexandre Philippe, filmmaker and director of the documentary Lynch/Oz says in KQED’s Forum around the 22 min mark (edited for clarity):

[Lynch would say that he got his ideas] from ‘the room over there…’ There’s this extraordinary confidence in his intuition in not trying to understand where those images come from but following those images and trusting that they’ll take him some place…that a film before it becomes a film…wants to be something. A filmmaker is a kind of an antenna and the job is to pay attention to what that film wants to be and to follow that. And I think there’s nobody greater at it than David Lynch.

One of the things I take from all the death and destruction and loss lately is that possibility is not passive. Something large is approaching, at great speed but at the same time already arrived. They say an event horizon is kind of like that. It must always have been this way. This both comforts, and encourages, me.

News

I can now share that I’m a 2025 Periplus Fellow (prose), and a 2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow (film). We kicked off recently at Periplus so I’ve been getting to know some of the other Fellows there. Orientation is upcoming for Jerome Hill—I’m looking forward to connecting with that cohort too. This is all a huge honor—I’m humbled and energized.

Periplus connects Fellows with established writer-mentors for the year.

The Jerome Hill Fellowship grants $60,000 to each Fellow to help them realize projects over the course of three years.

In the Studio

I’ve been working on a piece for exhibition off and on since late October.

I had to pivot a few weeks ago (damn the antenna) and it’s been frenetic. Right up to install, my studio looked like a tornado blew through it (at least I’m in good company):

Two days before install (left). After the storm (right).

I had my doubts during the most feverish of hours—but the piece is finally finished:

Leisure | 여유 · 38 x 12 x 0.75 inches. India ink on Strathmore Bristol 400 paper · Mounted on maple plywood

This mounted illustration will live at much anticipated (and soon to open) Golden Hof, a new venture by Sam Yoo of NYC’s celebrated Golden Diner.

I was a fan of Golden Diner long before they went viral by the way, and I’m over the moon to have my work become a part of its sister restaurant.

Detail:

Ten women, chillin’.

Leisure | 여유 presents a tableau of Korean women in traditional dress, sitting down to drink and enjoy anju¹ together. This kind of scene is historically unlikely:

Paintings and photographs seem to show only men in such settings. Even when in-frame, women appear to be serving or entertaining others—but never served or entertained, themselves.

This isn’t altogether unexpected given that Confucian principles, which traditional Korean society has been plagued by, prohibited women from drinking. The same principles also enforced strict gender roles, idealizing the silent, chaste, and obedient woman in service of her husband. All that to say: I couldn’t find historical evidence of the Korean woman in moments of self-centering, or self-indulgence.

Leisure | 여유 is my way of filling that gap.

Below is a video of me lining one of the figures. As you can see, working with a piece of paper over 3 feet wide was challenging for inking as well as cutting and mounting. Over 30 minutes has been condensed into 1.5, showing process at about 20x speed:

While the core idea of Leisure | 여유 remained pretty much the same from the beginning—the Korean woman savoring a moment, with a drink, specifically—it evolved significantly in terms of execution over a period of four months.

In Iteration 1, when I was also baselining the project as a whole, a woman from the past is about to take a sip of the modern day martini. You can read more about this approach in 82. Descend, 83. Engage, 84. Childlike, and 85. Alchemy.

Iteration 1: The gaze is direct and almost confrontational. Five watercolor paintings are mounted on wood, then overlaid on a larger painted background.

In Iteration 2, which you can read more about in 86. After, I began exploring line work as well as anchoring in personal history to mitigate some of the “distance” I felt in Iteration 1.

For Iteration 2, I used a photograph of my maternal grandmother as reference.

Members, continue reading below about how this piece evolved; the challenges of the project; lessons learned; how (and why I think) the breakthrough and pivot happened. Also, a closer look at my sketchbook, which I feel comfortable sharing with a smaller audience.

Everyone else, I hope you enjoyed the microessay and a peek at process, above. Thanks, as always, for reading.