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The Mesquite is one of the most common trees of the desert southwest. It’s remarkably drought tolerant and sends its roots deep in the ground to find water when in need. When water is scarce, it will drop its leaves to conserve energy, proving itself an exceptional survivor of the harsh desert. Many in the Southwest have depended on mesquites for shade, fuel, lumber, and nutrition for thousands of years. For this reason, it has been dubbed “The Tree of Life.” An Apache myth recounts how the sun and moon together formed the mesquite tree and then dangled beans from its branches.
There are certain words that, like mesquite, resonate with meaning for me. Mulgil, a Korean word for waterway, has always stood out in my mind as a distinctive feature of our landscape. As the water finds its way through the terrain of the earth, the earth will also move and shift, give way for the water to flow. As Heraclitus said, everything flows, nothing stands still.
My recent work explores the interconnectedness of the natural world to ourselves. Each work in the exhibit examines how the forms and shapes of nature correspond to our interior landscape, and offers a moment of contemplation on nature and time. As for techniques, I incorporate hand-coiled paper, a practice called jiseung, mirroring its forms and shapes. Hand-coiling hanji, Korean traditional mulberry paper, is a slow process, but the technique, like raising the grain of the mesquite tree disks and hand printing, requires an attentiveness that foregrounds the immediate world around me. As I lay down the paper coils, also from nature, onto the paper, I am imagining the life of a tree, a flow of the water, their stories.
The Mesquite is one of the most common trees of the desert southwest. It’s remarkably drought tolerant and sends its roots deep in the ground to find water when in need. When water is scarce, it will drop its leaves to conserve energy, proving itself an exceptional survivor of the harsh desert. Many in the Southwest have depended on mesquites for shade, fuel, lumber, and nutrition for thousands of years. For this reason, it has been dubbed “The Tree of Life.” An Apache myth recounts how the sun and moon together formed the mesquite tree and then dangled beans from its branches.
There are certain words that, like mesquite, resonate with meaning for me. Mulgil, a Korean word for waterway, has always stood out in my mind as a distinctive feature of our landscape. As the water finds its way through the terrain of the earth, the earth will also move and shift, give way for the water to flow. As Heraclitus said, everything flows, nothing stands still.
My recent work explores the interconnectedness of the natural world to ourselves. Each work in the exhibit examines how the forms and shapes of nature correspond to our interior landscape, and offers a moment of contemplation on nature and time. As for techniques, I incorporate hand-coiled paper, a practice called jiseung, mirroring its forms and shapes. Hand-coiling hanji, Korean traditional mulberry paper, is a slow process, but the technique, like raising the grain of the mesquite tree disks and hand printing, requires an attentiveness that foregrounds the immediate world around me. As I lay down the paper coils, also from nature, onto the paper, I am imagining the life of a tree, a flow of the water, their stories.