Joo Young Choi

by Ariel Radock

Fill In The Blank Gallery: A substantial amount of your work is an amalgamation of emotions reflecting your personal difficulties growing up as an adopted child. Do you find a catharsis painting such an intimate subject?

JooYoung Choi: That's a good question. I think it really matters on the situation. Sometimes, when I paint it is a moment where everything stops. The world stops vibrating and I can focus. When the work does have an autobiographical feel, regarding adoption, it has become a place for me to organize my thoughts and feels about things that are generally not tangible. Through symbols I can take ideas, feelings, passed events and orchestrate various combinations of how they interact within my mine. At times painting has been a way for me to share my life and my feelings about the world without having to say too much. This has been incredibly important with both my Korean family, because of the language barrier we deal with. Also, it has been a way to discuss certain things about my life that are at times confusing or complicated for my American family and I to talk about. For myself, I don't feel that painting is a form of therapy but I do see it as a form of meditation. It is an inner conversation and a way to break organize the various aspect of my life.

FIB: There is a point during childhood when we become aware of ourselves and of others. Have you always created art as means of expression?

JYC: I have always loved to make art. I was always the little girl who kept drawing at the bench outside while all the other kids decided to run around or do something else. The other thing I always did was sing. I sang all the time. One of my youngest elementary school memories is getting caught drawing one some multiplication butcher paper in 1st grade and I was singing to myself and the teacher pick me up and put me over her leg and spanked me in front of the class. It never stopped me. My family (American) have always been incredibly supportive of my love of making things. I grew up with my father making doll houses and using lots of woodshop tools, my mother was always painting ceramics, making crafts, and sewing me and my sister's dresses. I was really lucky to have parents who encouraged me through a number of different creative forms of expression to explore myself and the world. Art was also a great way for me to feel as though I belonged. I felt like an outsider for most of my life, I would watch tons of cartoons and I collected comic book marvel cards, I would memorize birthdays and super power levels, I even know that Wolverine is 5'3" and that Betsy Braddock who is Captain Britain's sister magically became Asian. Comics and art were the only place I really saw people who looked like me, other than porn or the stereotypical or archaic pictures I would see in National Geographic. Jubilee, Psychloke, Wolverine's ex-girlfriend, etc. I would just stare at these women and feel better. The first image, I think really got me interested in art, was a Norman Rockwell painting that had a little Asian girl in it, I loved that image, because it was the first time I ever saw an Asian girl in a painting.

(detail)

FIB: Reality is a fickle term. Some use it to describe how things are in relation as to how they should be. What is your critical response to reality?

JYC: Reality is weird. People think about absolutes too much, in my own opinion. Who knows maybe they need absolutes and they need to have reality. Realness really started to breakdown for me when I found out my birthday. I grew up saying people that I was born on Nov. 29th 1982, but I was told that it was a birthday made up by the agency and that my parents didn't know whether it was my real birthday. On my birthday, I used to sit and wonder if my birthmother was thinking about me, I thought about that every year. When I met my birthfather, he told me it was the right date, but later on after finding my birthmother she corrected him and explained that I was born on Dec 5 1982, which really isn't that big of deal. But, that is according to the lunar calendar that follows the moon, which means technically by the christian calendar, I was born January 17th 1983. So what is real? Is the christian calendar real? Is the lunar calendar real? Because the lunar calendar is different than the christian calendar some time in January I get a call from my birthmother trying to use her best english to wish me a happy birthday. And every Nov 29th, I sing happy birthday with my American family. I am 28 in American years and in Korea because they round up and count the time in the womb I'm 30. So who is right, what is real? I often forget how old I am. What is real I guess doesn't necessarily matter. What I feel, what I choose to embrace and explore, those things interest me far more than the concept of one concise reality.

FIB: Descartes once said, “I think therefore I am”. You mention that painting verifies your own existence. How have you come to this conclusion?

JYC: The whole idea of painting helping me exist, came from growing with my American family and the various heirlooms that have been passed on from generation to generation. Before, I met my birth family, I was in many ways this floating person, who didn't even know who's nose she had and who's smile she had. When I began to paint, I started to see people who looked like me. Growing up in New Hampshire, Asians were far and few between. The stories of my life are complicated, difficult, strange and sometimes really remarkable gifts, through painting I have been able to document these moments. They are kind of like snapshots of my life that were taken with a super space age technology camera that can take photos that push past the concepts of linear time, capture emotions and bring forth images of things that usually are invisible. When I would step back and see these things, I felt as if a little more of me was actually real. It is as if, growing up I was like Bill Cosby in ghost dad, as he was slowly fading away, he couldn't touch things and he was fading, except for me, it was the reverse. I went from a ghost to a girl.

FIB: You have constructed an alternate universe for the viewer to participate, feel, and contemplate. What mythology have you created for yourself and for your art?

JYC: Yeah, I haven't fully broken down the many different places and spaces within this world. I'm still letting it grow, similar to a very long big bang. Things continue to spread out from the initial explosion and they zoom off into their own galaxies. The mythology of my work is somewhat planned but much like a fiction writer, at times my characters just do what ever they want even if it bothers me. As of now, there are the lost girls, the counterparts to the lost boys from Peter Pan. They don't live in Never Neverland, instead, they zoom around in different dimensions and explore. They help people, they bring people to the right world so they can live a happy life. I joke often with people, that all the bees that have been dying and disappearing lately have all gone to the bear planet, with the bear clan girls. Those girls helped them get to their planet because humans on earth were abusing them so badly, they had to get free. I feel that having a special world is really key to keeping my work accessible to a large audience, which includes me. If I just painted boats or mountains, it might be fun, but I know I'd probably become bored with it unless there was a narrative of the mountain was eating people or the boats had duck faces and could fly. Recently, I was showing some work to some neighbors near my studio and they knew the different lost girls and their names, and they could actually identify which was number nine and which one was number 36. It's fun to get lost in something imaginative. It's fun to be like a child again. It's fun to be playful and I believe it is one of the best ways to invite people into a deeper level of conversation. Although the works seems rather sweet, the closer you look the more complicated they become. The playing octopuses and field mice in Munoe's Attack, seem rather sweet until you see the teeth on the octopuses and the terrible fear in the mice's eyes. There is a twist of playfulness and pain in most of my works.

FIB: In your work there is a menagerie of zoomorphic creatures ranging from the cute to the sinister. What significant role do they contribute to the narrative of a painting as a whole?

JYC: Animals have always been very important to me. Not necessarily real ones, but the animals in my mind were always pretty cool. My favorite film growing up was Roger Rabbit, it still is. I have this hideous Roger Rabbit doll that is about 20 years old. He has travelled internationally with me a number of times to Korea, Japan and Canada. The rabbits in my work were one of the first characters I created, they represented protection but they also posed the question of: what happens when you grow up, do your imaginary or childhood characters grow up with you? And if so, what do they look like, what do they do, now that you're not always lost with them in play land? How do they occupy their time, do they get girlfriends? Get part time jobs? Find a new purpose? The animal helmets that my characters wear are based on my childhood growing with tons of T.V. shows that had magical animals and people who interacted: April and the Ninja Turtles, the Little Mermaid and Flounder, the Jungle Book Disney cartoon—I used to dance around to the aerobic record they had put out, it was pretty sweet, at least to the 5 year old version of me who really dug records and cartoons, etc. The thing about animals is they can say so much just in which animal you pick, unlike humans, where people are just people. I can't say much about a person without clothes and accessories, but my intentional decision for different animals to represent different feelings, emotions, ideas, personalities is a playful and economic choice that brings most people back to their childhood, when it was normal for animals in books to talk to children. It brings many people back to this vulnerable, magical place that stretches the concept of reality and the absolutes we live with.

FIB: Has the experience of meeting your birth mother and father changed your work?

JYC: Yes. After meeting them, I began to make portraits of myself that actually look like me. I remember in my undergrad having assignments to do a self-portrait and no matter how hard I tried they just didn't look like me. I know I am not a monkey, but there have been studies of chimps that are raised by humans and consider themselves humans and they are even attracted to humans, and I think for me, for years, I really couldn't see myself. I remember in Sunday school drawing a picture of my family, and when I got to my face I drew myself as a blonde girl with BIG blue eyes. Finding my birth parents was so grounded, it allowed me to explore the contours of our DNA, personalities and our essences. I started to see myself in the mirror. One day I was walking down the street, thinking too hard, and when I look in the window, I looked like a spitting image of my birthmother when she gets concerned about me studying to hard or not eating enough kimchi. Also, visiting Korea, so many times has introduced a whole new visual language and combinations of colors that became an everyday experience, from the food to the signs that amass the buildings, color is everywhere. It is bright, it is fun, and it is wonderful to get lost in it. After meeting them, I was free in a way to move on to other things. It wasn't always about filling this void, it was now about seeing what was in the mirror, now that I could actually fully see someone standing there. And it allowed me to look beyond the loss or the mystery and see other people, the issues in the world and in the universe. And many ways it gave me a chance to something else, instead of an adoptee who didn't have many answers about the origins of my existence.

FIB: Describe a typical working day at your studio.

JYC: Well, I usually get to the studio by 5 pm and I will work till morning then go and sleep and do it all over again. I have sketchbooks with ideas, tons of books and clippings of images I am attracted to. I often spend time listening to Lil' Wayne or Tom Waits or the Tokyo Latin Orchestra, and I pick images I want to paint. It really matters on what deadlines I have. If I am working on what I call Rockstahs, which are my larger works that I can spend months upon months if not years on, and then I have smaller works called Etudes, Cadets which are experimental paintings and portraits. I also make LPCs which are the paintings people generally think look like stained glass, they stand for Line Portrait and Color. I spend time responding to emails, updating my website, researching new grants, I tutor my student once a week in the studio, I build a lot of canvas frames, and I give myself time to make tons of messes. Usually, if I am working on a batch of paintings, I will lay them all out and rotate amongst them, switching from painting to painting and letting them feed off each other. With the larger ones, there is far more planning and looking and thinking than actual painting. I also dance a lot. I have toys, like a sweet Voltron and this weird mechanical rabbit and polymer models of my girls so I can get the shading right on them. Also, I watch a lot of cartoons, listen to NPR or watch college lectures on various subjects from Harvard, Pepperdine, UCLA and other school. It has actually become the best way for me to doodle. I forgot how to doodle at some point, and it wasn't until I started listening to videos of lectures was I able to get back to that, "I'm in school, but I'm not going to pay attention to the teacher" mode, and since then the ideas began to flow again. I am thinking a lot about how to create parameters for me to follow and then rebel against.

FIB: Which pigment would best describe your personality and why?

JYC: I don't know if I could pick just one. I don't know probably a really bright turquoise, just like the stone, uh, maybe a little richer, um it's a special color to me, it's similar to blue and it definitely not green, it's as if blue and green had a baby. I like that. I like thinking about pigments having sex, and I like thinking about them making babies.

FIB: What is Ta-Art and how did you conceive of this idea?

JYC: TAARTS! Ta-arts are great. They stand for tiny affordable arts. It was this whole idea that I wanted to make art more accessible so people who enjoyed all the little creatures in my paintings could take one home. I have sold them to help finance my second trip to Korea and now I make them and use a percentage of the profits to send vitamins to single expecting mothers in Korea. They're also taarts because I make them in batches, and when it's sunny out, I put them on a larger tray or canvas and lay them out in the sun to dry. They are all different sorts of animals, like space alien caterpillars from the future. They're are also space alien mosquitos from the future who have evolved to the point that they don't need to prick people to get their food, they have evolved to the point that they don't even feed on blood, they suck up negative energy and transform it into life force, there are the broken robots who have found new purpose in their life with the help of the lost girls, there are the gumdrop birds and hold our secrets, there are the marshmallow bunnies who are playful and sweet and usually don't have noses. There are furds with are what got made when a fish and a bird had a kid. They are tons of fun and weird TAARTS and they have names, like Charles or Lamont and Betty Anne or Ryoko. I think it goes back to my childhood and how big cabbage patch kids were and all the other things I collected that had names and personalities like Care Bears, the Smurfs, etc.

FIB: Will you be returning to Korean anytime soon?

JYC: I would really enjoy visiting for Chuseok the Korean Thanksgiving, but I am unsure if I will be able to do that this year because of graduate school. I call my family in Korea often, but for now, it is best to stay in the states and focus on my studies, my career and spending time with my baby niece who has such a love for painting. She has two taarts of her own, named Max and Doreen she calls them by name and drags them around the house.

FIB: Where and what do you consider to be “home”?

JYC: Home is on cloud10. It's the place that I say my paintings are made. It could be in Korea, could be in America, where ever. Many times people think that I am struggling between two worlds in my work, but if anything, the world that I make in my paintings, is the world that I am quite comfortable in. It maybe the reason that my paintings are usually patchworked together with parts of New Hampshire, parts of Korea, and bits of animation/comics/etc. Home isn't one physical place, it is many places put together. It is the summer smell of the humidity on the little porch in Ansan, at my step birthmother's house. It is feeling of the birch trees and the colors in my father's garden in New Hampshire. It is the laugh of my niece, her blueberry blue eyes that stare lovingly and touch my paintings. It is my mother's amazing apple pies. It is sound of my dog Suki barking. It is also the sweaty smell of my Appa (Korean father) getting home from the farm, the singing of my Omma (birth mother) at the Norebang (Karaoke Room). I guess I am like a turtle I just carry my home with me everywhere. It is a little bit old memories, it's part family, some nostalgia and a mix of beautiful and strange creatures I visit everyday through my paintings.

FIB: What projects are you involved with currently?

JYC: Well, I just began graduate school at Art Institute of Boston Lesley, which has been awesome. I am interested in developing more clothing, stuffed animals, small sculptures and I also have an interest in installation. This year in grad school I will continue to develop my concepts, my characters and hopefully create a book that organizing a large portion of the flora, fauna and characters from the worlds surrounding cloud10.

Comments

[RGPB]

Thank you for sharing this interview. I loved it, and I love the paintings.