Life in MAKING

I’m in a season of connecting the dots, and designing for and from my own life. I’ve turned toward prototyping as a way to carry myself through ambiguity, and distill the themes in life and work that are most important to me.

Below are a few emerging projects, from a life in making.

Jjile-kkot (Wild Rose)

A documentary project with my grandfather, between Henderson, Nevada & Ulsan, South Korea

In the hallways, he is singing: Jang Sa-ik’s latest hit – a song of yearning for home, a place where the wild rose only grows. The Tennessee Waltz – a big hit in his college town in Korea, an ode to Patti Page before the war. Recurringly, it is Andrea Bocelli and Helene Fischer: “Time to Say Goodbye.”

This is the story of my grandfather, in a story that he is still living out, today.

In this documentary, I’ve chosen to flip the lens and trace my own family’s story – before it is lost and sunken from memory. As we follow the events of my grandfather’s life, we are carried along significant and undertold events in Korean / Asian American history: Japanese colonial occupation; the Korean War; choosing between the front and back of the bus; working from the fields in California to the CIA – all in an unfinished search for happiness, in context of the American Dream.

Piecing together film photographs and the fragments of stories, it is an attempt for both of us to see his life and legacy. 67 years after leaving Korea, was it all worth it? Can he ever return – and lay to rest – in the land from which he came? This film is a living meditation on what is lost, and what can, or cannot, be restored – amidst memory, culture, and identity. 

We recently completed the first production shoot for this emerging documentary. As creator and granddaughter, while capturing as best I can – woven into this documentary is a wish. I hope that documentary can serve as a medium for seeing and witnessing a person – bottling the gift of understanding. And I hope that in understanding, comes healing — in relationship with our selves, and in relationship with each other.

Seeing Our Stories

An intergenerational storytelling kit dedicated to knowing where we’ve come from, and how we fit together.

Nearly 12 months ago, I was reckoning with creative block. I wrote about being stuck — and if you choose, you can read the beginnings of an open journal here.

The next day, I started building Seeing Our Stories  —  a family storytelling community dedicated to knowing where we’ve come from, and how we fit together.

In making this space, I’m designing for myself — and for everyone I’ve ever met. Whether we’ve known each other for ages, or we haven’t met yet — I invite you to explore this website in its early days. It will be ever emerging, changing, and growing. And your participation & feedback is truly a gift.

Treehouse by Dezine School

A dezine school (yes, a portmanteau of design + zine) for young people to step into their power as storytellers, designers, and community shapers for a better world.

I’m in a season of making and designing from my own lived experience. In working in international development and with communities of different identities and experiences than me, I’ve often held myself as a design ally.

Yet I know (and astrology confirms) that I feel called to do deep work at home, and that I’d love to return to working in K-12 education someday. The question alive for me is: how can a storytelling, design, and social change education serve as a vessel for individual and collective wellbeing?

I prototyped this mobile app through research, insights, design theory & principles, low-fidelity concepts, and high-fidelity designs. It was awarded as fourth place finalist in the Creative Reaction Lab & Adobe Creative Jam 2021.

We’re continuing to seek perspective, feedback, and collaboration on this project. I welcome you to reach out if you resonate with these themes!

Typhoon Ulysses Recovery for Baliuag, Bulacan

Fundraising to help communities recover from Typhoon Ulysses

Thanks to the generosity of many, in November 2020, we raised $1795 USD to support the community of Baliuag, Bulacan recover from Typhoon Ulysses. (For more background, read here.)

With these funds, we’ve provided immediate essentials for vulnerable & affected community members; and clean water & sanitation access throughout the area.

As a thank you to contributors, I sent small prints of photography from my time living and working in the Philippines. The series includes images from Manila, Coron, Batad, and Siquijor.

In the seeds of my imagination, I’d like to extend this from a solo fundraising campaign to a print shop centered around ethical storytelling: practicing sovereignty in how we tell our stories, and flowing proceeds back to the community from which they came.

12 Weeks

Do new things. Make words, images, art. Share in community. This is an open journal, and an open invitation to cultivate curiosity, creativity & community as ways of being.

Past couple years, I’d been feeling stuck in a creative hiatus & discovery gone missing. In some ways, the pandemic offered a blessing in its act of interruption. Of its many heads, and the parts that make sense and the parts that don’t — it forced me to be still. For that, I’m grateful.

So, I decided to set some practices & intentions — every week, for 12 weeks. To do new things. To make words, and images, and actually share. To embrace what opens up in community.

To keep myself honest, I’ve kept an open journal on Medium. Follow along (and if you feel so called, join in) as I push through imperfect creative work at: www.medium.com/12-weeks.