The luxury of time and space

An end of summer comic

Greetings! I promised you a continuation of last week’s materials post, which I am working on documenting. In the meantime, enjoy this late summer comic I was inspired to create after an extra long Labor Day weekend ☀️

Life can move at breakneck speed, especially during a summer full of social obligations—or a literal wedding, in my case. Despite the wretched humidity of NYC this week, I feel so grateful to be able to soak in the last bits of summer with a genuine sense of freedom and leisure.

There are tons of perks to knowing multiple languages, but one of my favorite aspects is being able to more deeply connect to feelings and concepts that you never thought to put into words before. Finding new untranslatable words is its own form of poetry, a new way of seeing. The Korean word 여유 isn’t untranslatable, but it is a concise yet broad concept without a specific likeness in English.

여유 is a state of mind, one that is harder than ever to reach nowadays in a busy and distracted attention economy. Hence we have books on recapturing our stolen focus and doing nothing (see also:

Lian Cho

’s latest comic). But I want to caution against trying to optimize one’s way towards focus or freedom (which I have definitely attempted many times!)

Through my meditation practice lately I’ve been challenged to realize that the goal is not to try to hold onto a state of 여유 or focus or pleasure. It is to see what is happening in and around me, recognize it for what it is, and welcome other states of being without holding on too tightly.

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If you’re in the Washington D.C. area, check out the Korean American Artist Collective’s first group exhibition Han at Culture House this September! You can see my gouache painting called Jamae (Sisters) on display.

My painting of two sisters captures the reflection that siblings reveal to us and the myriad of emotions that arise. Both the playful sister and the disgruntled sister are characters I relate to and have seen mirrored in my own family. The two sisters share one body as a reminder of our shared roots and as a personal declaration to remain close with my own sister, releasing and sharing our han rather than letting it fester.

Speaking of the Korean American Artist Collective (KAAC) which I joined earlier this year, I’d love to ask you a quick favor that should take just a few seconds!

KAAC is a finalist in the 2023 Gold Futures Challenge serving the AAPI community. It uses an online model for philanthropy that will award funding depending on vote count, which means your vote can help determine how much funding KAAC receives! We are a small org compared to many of the other finalists, which also means the funding will have a huge impact to our group and other Korean American artists in our community that we can support. I would so appreciate if you took a moment to vote for KAAC using the link below.