Soon after meeting Esther at the communal-living artist residency, Vermont Studio Center, we quickly realized we had very compatible creative goals and subject interests. I was just coming off the Courts show which I had done another catalog for, and was putting it out in the world that I was interested in doing more book projects. I also explained my somewhat complicated ancestry and relationship to the DNA-revealed quarter Korean identity that I now owned in adulthood. Being a white girl who had mostly asian friends growing up, it was hard not to feel like a fraud or “poser” as an adult, when speaking about asian identity or asian experiences. Culturally I was not asian but I knew it lived in my body and I believe in my subconscious as well.

While Esther helped me dig up information about my unknown Korean grandfather and his possible reason for being in Poland in the 50s, I was reading her then manuscript of the story her grandfather wrote of his journey from northern Korea to southern Korea. It was then that our years long project and re-occuring videos calls, and visits in New York and Seoul began.

The illustrations for the book were the result of many experiments on finding ways to translate meaning without prescribing too much unrealistic details to things I didn’t know or have context for. To show a thing in the wispy and intangible ways that memory both holds and distorts with time.