(dramatic music) - I am an artist, a musician, and a leader in the community.

I'm really into dreaming up just wonder for the world and trying to share that with everyone.

(upbeat music) My work is very colorful and very whimsical.

I'm really interested in creating sort of the imagined spaces of like where all hearts are connected.

I know that sounds like really sort of maybe out there, but I sort of love this idea of like finding belonging in art.

And so they are imagined spaces.

So whether they are these bright, colorful sort of blocks of color or they are reimagined nature spaces, I sort of kind of combine all of it.

The artifact of that ends up being this often bright, bold, colorful world.

(dramatic music) I sort of have an empty canvas, and I just kind of paint.

And I might start off with something like a limited palette or a mood that I'm trying to convey or maybe I'm having many moods.

I'm never really sure where it's gonna take me, but I just get canvas going.

I just say that I wanna move the hand and just sort of start.

And then often in that time I will pause, and I'll sort of see little things kind of come together and work off a moment in a piece and then try to like enhance that.

I really want people to have this feeling of wanting to dive into the work.

And so I try to kind of see where I'm wanting to dive into it myself first.

(dramatic music) I grew up in Iowa in a small town called Dysart, Iowa.

It was a square mile.

I was adopted, so I'm adopted from Korea, but I was an orphan, so I don't actually have any idea of anything.

I grew up around a lot of trees and nature, and I think just being immersed in nature like art was around me because I would see art in nature all the time.

A lot of the work has like a black light responsive paint, which is really just a paint that is sort of neon, and when you turn a black light on it, it really glows and shines.

But to me that became this like metaphor because I'm always thinking of the ways which all beings are interconnected.

And so that became this sort of like hidden layer, this like hidden reminder for all beings to feel like they belong.

(dramatic music) The Snail Mail Art Collab is a project that I started in the pandemic.

I wanted to connect with people and sort of create an experience where we would have a piece of art that we worked on individually but then collectively in a group.

And it also explored the idea of impermanence because you started with something, and it completely would change by the time it would come back.

Everyone started with a piece of paper and creating anything they wanted.

You mailed it to the next person, and that person would then add to the piece.

The only rule was that there had to be one element of the original.

So if there was an entire piece of paper blue, you wanna keep one tiny piece of paper blue if you wanted to paint the whole thing yellow.

(dramatic music) And I actually have artists literally all around the world doing it.

I have three tracks of artists and it's been, it's been challenging.

There was a post office in the Philippines that literally exploded.

Someone sent me something that said I have to quit because we lost all the work because the post office exploded.

And I was like, this, I can't make this up.

This is a real thing.

And so it was a very challenging thing to like, it's a challenging thing to sort of lead, but I'm not actually creating any art in that.

I'm mostly facilitating other artists.

But we eventually hope to have like a in-person show with the artists from all around the world coming to the capital region to potentially show off this piece.

I feel so excited that I have created a network of people that have all stayed in touch with each other through social media, through this artwork.

And there's like new friendships and connections that are happening.

And so that's exciting.

(upbeat music) I run a project called Friends of Tivoli Lake Preserve and Farm.

We use a flock of sheep to manage vegetation in a nature preserve.

Working with animals and being on the land has been such a beautiful experience 'cause I'm literally tending to both the plants and the animals and sort of watching that relationship.

And to me, I think a lot about cycles, like life cycles sort of life, death, life or who knows what happens.

I experienced loss at a young age and because I was an orphan, there's a lot of like unknown mystery to me.

And so for me, when I'm in nature, I witness those cycles all the time.

Whether it's literally the sun and the moon coming or the seasons, we always see cycles happening.

And where I used to really be afraid and have a lot of sadness around the loss of change, I have really come to embrace change and all of those cycles that are constantly around us and kind of leaning into that unknown space.

(upbeat music) Like I don't know everything, and that's completely okay.

That's sort of the human experience is just being here and being curious.

(upbeat music) Being in nature and witnessing that has just been such a gift.

And then tying it to my art, that's just sort of my visual way of playing with these ideas that I'm curious about.

(upbeat music)