Jade Dragon visits South Korea: Paju, Daegu and Seoul

As I was invited to help cover the Korea Bojagi Forum 2012, hosted by Chunghie Lee, I had my first opportunity to visit South Korea. I think I was fortunate to see some of the best and unusual parts, as the whole intense experience never failed to provide novel situations. From a small village museum for paper flowers, bedecked with banquet and featuring both traditional Korean performers and suavely dressed contemporary Korean singers which enticed both visitors and locals onto the dance floor, to a tripartite jewelry, gallery and design academy operation run with only a small crew by the jeweler and her husband, each encounter was full and beyond expectations.

Art Factory, a gallery located in Heyri Art Village

Six days of the trip were spent in Paju, near Seoul. Paju itself has its own interesting presence, an experimental district called Paju Book City. Founded to encourage print publication and publishing, this area has its own substantial guest house, which basically serves as its hotel, and a wide number of publishing houses alongside some natural marshland. With a few restaurants, it's a quiet retreat from the bustle of Seoul, and was relatively close to the Heyri Art Village, where the conference was held. Heyri is another interesting instance of Korean public development, where a number of galleries, cafés and a museum or two provides a substantial amount of space for art. Gallery MOA, which was doing a Forum exhibit on textile sculptures, was one visit, as well as Lee & Park Gallery. In total, about seven galleries presented work from the Bojagi Forum, and there are even more galleries in Heyri. As a concentrated area of craft, Heyri should be marked down as a possible place to interface with the Korean craft community.

Dongdaemun Fabric Market

South Korea, like several other East Asian countries, has its acknowledged culture centered on its largest city, Seoul. No where else in Korea is considered to be its equal in having the latest styles and the strongest artistic presence, not to mention the locus of luxury goods. This centralized society can also be seen in China. What this means is to get to the heart of Korean craft, one must visit Seoul. Insadong and the Dongdaemun fabric market are two places where one can purchase craft or materials. Insadong is a series of roads lined with stores, scattered with galleries and street market stalls. From kitsch to respectable jewelry or ceramics, Insadong is not a center of high quality handmade craft, but still offers a good place to make some nice finds. As for textiles, the Dongdaemun market is very extensive. If you've visited the leviathan wholesale markets of places of various Asian countries, you should have a good idea of what's in store.

Silver and jade necklace by
Soonyoung Moon

Mond Gallery, owned by Moon
and Jeong

Cheongdam-dong, one of the major thoroughfares through Seoul, is the city's hub for luxury brands. Most Koreans are, if they're interested in jewelry or clothing, concerning themselves with high cost name-brand items. This trend continues in other East Asian countries. Most luxury items are a symbol of status rather than aesthetics, and known brands carry more clout among the populace. However, beyond the immediate streetside stores of Prada and Tiffany, one can find small design firms and businesses set up by independent artists in the blocks nearby. Among these is Aetas, the brainchild of Soonyoung Moon and her husband, Hyukjin Jeong. A combination of gallery and design academy, Aetas is perhaps the only educational institution of its kind to teach students not only jewelry design, but also small business practices. While this may seem like an exaggeration, Korean culture, like many East Asian societies, does not promote individual success to the same degree that can be found in the United States. If one is to make jewelry, one is expected to work for a larger firm rather than be an independent studio artist. Soonyoung is one of the rare jewelers living in Korea who is the latter, and her gallery exhibits both her work, as well as student exhibitions. She also sells her work in one of the large department stores bordering Cheongdam-dong. Her small company has grappled with many of the issues of small businesses in any economy, but are particularly inspirational for those of us in the craft field.

Flower Museum of Yongchun

We also spent two days in Daegu, a textile production city many hours south of Seoul. In fairly stark contrast to Seoul's hive of apartment buildings, here one will simply see clusters of urban area interspersed with vast sections of farms and rolling green hills. The Flower Museum of Yongchun village, near Daegu, and the Museum of Natural Dye Arts in Daegu proper were the two notable visits. The Flower Museum exhibits exquisite handmade paper flowers in a small multi-spoked house. In this case, a thousand words could not substitute for a simple picture.

Museum of Natural Dye Arts

Of particular value to fiber artists is the Museum of Natural Dye Arts, which hosts a trove of information about traditional Korean clothmaking and dyemaking, with sculptural tableaus set up all over the museum showing the processes. Where possible, English translations are included in the captions. The incredible amount of materials used to make dye, shown in the bottom floor of the museum, is just part of the reason this museum is a hidden gem. The wife of the museum's director is also one of the few experts on traditional Korean dyemaking methods, such as the use of persimmons to make various bronzing browns. Some of her hand-dyed pieces were available for sale in the gift shop, which one must be warned cohabitates with the museum's collection. Don't assume everything you see is for sale; indeed, unless it has a price tag, it's probably not!

Those who have been paying attention at craft shows the last few years will have seen the successive arrival of Korean jewelers on the scene. Upon visiting South Korea, the role of art, aesthetics and craft in Korean life can be seen as almost everpresent. Architectural elements are constantly played with to create sculptural forms, so even in the cities proper one can see the influence of design and style. As both a caretaker of traditional arts and the source of a new generation of craftspeople, South Korea is certainly an artistic treasure.

New Developments: Gender 3.0 by Hsiang-Ting Yen

Hsiang-Ting Yen
Specialty: Jewelry, utilizing modern technology and traditional Chinese aesthetics
Most Recent Exhibition: Thesis Exhibition Gender 3.0 (March – April 2012)
Upcoming Craft Show: Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show 2012

   Hsiang-Ting Yen has recently graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Now stepping out into the wide outdoors of the craft world, Yen has pioneered from the groundwork laid out by her thesis exhibition a new series of jewelry that is sassy and sophisticated.

Gender 3.0: Portraits, Andrej Pejic and Marlon Brando
of enamels, carbon steel, copper, glass beads, freshwater
pearl, and copper foil, 7" x 5" x .5", 2012.

    Yen's Gender 3.0 Brooch series has its roots in the various pieces of body sculpture and installation she created for her thesis exhibit, particularly her Portrait piece. Within a traditional painting frame, Yen embroidered faces of celebrities onto translucent fabric, then lined up every portrait diagonally so the viewer could see through every frame collectively. The composite image reflects the many interpretations of the masculine and feminine presented by the mainstream and historical media. For her newest incarnation of the Gender series, enameled panels with faces of famous persons are similarly arranged, like venetian blinds, as the centerpiece of an array of steel wire frames sprouting from the back like a Broadway sign. Yen creates these enameled portraits by first etching the outline of the portrait into the copper, then using enamel paint within the lines for the facial details. This is why the faces look like a sketch. Although depicting contemporary figures, the style seems to harken back to an earlier age. Turn of the century art movements, such as Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau and Art Deco seem to contribute their design sensibilities to the piece. Because of this conjoining of past and present, the piece possesses a poignant nostalgia, almost a sense of deja vu. And that's besides challenging the viewer to re-examine stereotypes.

Gender 3.0: Portraits, Lady Gaga and Audrey Hepburn
of enamels, carbon steel, copper, glass beads, freshwater
pearl, and copper foil, 7" x 5" x .5", 2012.

    There's a sense of motion to the piece, evoking a look that the word glamorous could authentically be attributed to. One can imagine some sort of neo-Jazz Age flapper girl at leisure with one of these brooches. The piece seems to call up Tamara de Lempicka, from the abstraction of layered half faces, to the confluence of angularity and curvature of the brooches. These aspects resonate with the elements that makes Lempicka's work seem to sway through space. The variegation in the enameled portrait evokes the essence of the almost cubist folds in fabric that Lempicka lavishly draped her portrait subjects in. This gestalt is Yen's aesthetic in Gender 3.0.

Portrait sequence of fabric, thread, and acrylic, from thesis 
exhibition Gender 3.0, Savannah, Georgia.

    Soon showing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, where she has exhibited in years past as part of SCAD's student booth, Yen has successfully transformed her conceptual thesis exhibit into a beautiful and challenging style of jewelry. As a counterpoint to her In Bloom series, which will also be exhibiting at the show, Yen shows her strength in establishing unique branches of aesthetic, both bearing considerable merit. As Yen has shown in her past work, her exploration of these themes will surely yield diversity and success.

Studio Craft Brands: A Concept

  








   My thoughts about the modern craft economy center on making handmade craft as easily accessible as the big corporate brands, by strength in numbers and a common marketing strategy. One idea to this goal is organizing individual artists into a group of four or five, which forms a studio craft brand. The name is the common alias the artists go under, just as musicians use their band name. Like music bands, artists will sometimes leave their studio craft brands, and can go on to establish themselves under their own name. At other times, an individual artist who has been working on their own may join a joint project, and thus participate with a studio craft brand.

   My goal in expressing this idea is to explain the versatility of a modular system; we don't want artists to just get lost in larger and larger anonymous brands, so we need a way of focusing on specific people, as well as zoom out by establishing brands. We need to act at both the smallscale and largescale levels. Like a venn diagram, the goal is to make a structure where groups can join easily to cooperate on big projects, and then go back to being more individual after the project is done. The goal is a craft economy with flexibility, so it can accommodate change, expansion and contraction.
   Studio craft brands are similar to artist cooperatives, but the idea is to package complementary artists together to sell a look or a style that can be associated with the brand. Because of contemporary advertising, people associate an image with a big corporate brand, a lifestyle which is sold along with the jewelry or clothing. Studio craft brands are a way of both pooling resources and trying to establish handmade craft artists as alternative images to the big brands.

   Whether one is an individual studio artist or part of a group, creating a "look" that people can attach to is giving them something to imagine about. Social status is one reason why people purchase jewelry and clothing, like
designer shirts, dresses

and jackets. In this case, people are just buying what is most popularized in the media and seen as showing their wealth.

   However, there are also people who have some experience with art, and have their own aesthetics. These people aren't interested in a popular brand, but unique, interesting, or beautiful work. This demographic is the main market to start with for studio craft artists and brands.

   Also, just as the slow food and organic food movement have made people think about handmade food or cooking, an alternative craft movement, focusing on handmade products, could market itself as a brand identity in itself, with all studio craft artists falling under that umbrella.

Steel Corsage: Bongsang Cho

Bongsang Cho
Steel Corsage

Specialty: Jewelry, utilizing modern technology to surpass previous restrictions

Most Recent Craft Show: Smithsonian Craft Show 2012

Upcoming Craft Show: American Craft Exposition 2012


Bongsang Cho came to the United States from Seoul, South Korea, and brought with him a dedicated enthusiasm for metalsmithing, and an ethereal sense of grace and impermanency which gives a delicacy to his metalwork. He graduated from Hanyang University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Metals and Jewelry, and has recently graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a MFA, where he utilized several modern pieces of machinery in the college's jewelry department, such as the laser welder, to break new ground.

Cho's aesthetic is derived from the mysterious connections he senses between the organic, the artificial, and humanity. The flower is for him a metaphor which represents the essential nature of life, and extends beyond flora to embodying human existence, its connections and its transitoriness. The roots of the flowering plant are the same as the hidden relationships which support each individual life. It is for this reason that, abstractly and in literal interpretation, Cho uses the form of the flower in much of his jewelry and sculpture.

Night Blossom Brooch, of steel, sterling silver,
enamel, 24 karat keum boo, laser welding and
enameling, 7.5" x 3.5" x 2.5", Winter 2011

From the mammoth to the miniature, one can find this theme expressed, whether abstractly or literally, in his forms. A large copper sculpture of a flower, with spoon-like elements clustered together in the center for the plant's stamen, is like a prehistoric precursor to his delicate flower brooches of steel and silver, down to the hammered indentations on the protruding, arcing petals. The relation between the two is palpable, but for scale.  And yet Cho has many ways of exploring the flower form, which branch out themselves like pan-dimensional petals.

Tools, Enthusiasm, and Life #3, of copper,
enamel and 23 karat gold leaf, forging and
enameling, 48" x 16" x 12", Summer 2011

Stellar Brooch series, of copper and enamel, laser welding and enameling,
4" x 2.25" x 1.5", Spring 2012

For example, his more recent enameled and laser-welded Stellar Brooch series represent his underlying motif in abstract form. The highly geometric shapes of these brooches render them seemingly inorganic, but with splashes of color, and bearing out the vague outline of the form, Cho suggests the organic in the inorganic abstract. The folds of the piece become the petals of a Cubist flower. Cho is quite proud of this series, in part because the laser-welding process allowed him to bypass a previous restriction of enameling, that it can't be traditionally soldered after completion. Technology allows him to bypass this barrier to new artistic effect, and that is part of his pleasure in this series. The Night Blossom Brooch also exhibits use of the laser welder, Cho's favorite tool. The little sterling silver balls that dot the piece were attached using the machine.

Another brooch piece is literally a flower; the front stage actor which casts an elongated shadow across the backdrop, forming a waving crowd of hands. The flower represents a person or a life in many of Cho's pieces. Here, the flower takes the place of a human singer, actor or other performer, but also might represent many people, as the panoply of cast shadows imply. The feeling of a stage set and the evocative jubilance of people in the background conjure up the feeling of a rock concert that makes the Silhouette Brooch series exciting and emotive.

Silhouette Brooch series, of steel, aluminum, copper and pigment, laser
welding and enameling, 3.5" x 2.5" x 1", Fall 2011

Wild Life Brooch series, of copper and enamel, laser welding and
enameling, 3" x 2.5" x 1", 2" x 1.5" x 1", Spring 2012

Bongsang was born near Seoul, and thus grew up with the expansive urban environment of that city. From this, a more intimate association with construction must have led to his urban flower, composed of hard hats on enameled wire spirals, the black suggesting unpainted metal or industrial corrosion. The hard hats are the lives of the workers, who bloom from their own soil of a sorts, the asphalt and concrete of the city. The Wild Life Brooch series seems to suggest an admiration of this occupation by the artist, to typify it so as a flower. That which is deemed ordinary is also everpresent and essential to the tapestry of the living environment in which it resides.

Bongsang came to the United States after a meeting with Professor Komelia Okim in Korea. After attending a lecture by Okim, and having a conversation about American life, Cho traveled to the United States. He has been an assistant to veteran jeweler Namu Cho. He has now applied and been accepted to several craft shows, and will be attending more at the end of this year.

His work can be seen at www.bongsangcho.com.

Winter Night Brooch series, of fine silver and copper, laser

welding, 4.5" x 1.5" x 1", Spring 2012

Jade Dragon Goes to China: Yiwu and Shanghai

Recently I spent a month in China teaching English to primary school students. While a great experience in and of itself, I also found time to learn something about the jewelry and fashion market in China. The city I stayed at, Yiwu, about three hours southwest of Shanghai by bullet train, turned out to have a vast small commodities market called Yiwu International Trade City. Many cities in China have their own specialties in industry, and Yiwu is the center of China's small commodity sales. The International Trade City is composed of five buildings, each with four to five floors dedicated to different types of small commodities. District 1, of most interest to readers, had jewelry sales composing the entire second floor.

Yiwu International Trade City District 1

Yiwu's jewelry market is entirely mass production work. Jade jewelry is sold, as well as plastic, metal and glass necklaces, earrings, hair clips, and bracelets. Copies of ethnographic work are also for sale, as well as jewelry featuring either semi-precious stones or possibly replicas. Despite this, the work can be fairly expensive. Jade bracelets, highly popular among Chinese women, start around $400 US dollars and can go up, depending on the type of jade, into the range of thousands of dollars.

Case of jade bracelets at District 1 booth.

Yiwu takes pride in being the fashion jewelry capital of China. What the market lacks in innovative art it certainly possesses in quantity.

A wall of plastic ornaments in
one of District 1's many booths.

A booth containing metal jewelry and
pieces with colored stones.

To convey the size of this market, one needs to know each building is about the size of a convention center. By District 4, stall numbers were in the thirteen  thousand range. There are hundreds of  booths making up District 1's jewelry  floor. The floor has several sections; head ornaments being one example. Each  section has perhaps a hundred booths. The District buildings are very regular, with open parts containing stairs and elevators breaking up the labyrinthine aisles of stalls.

Close-up of rings with colored stones or glass. With the number of
fake materials in China, it is difficult to tell whether these are replicas
or the genuine article.

District 5 is also relevant to readers, in that it is the Import portion of the International Trade City. The sections that include jewelry and clothing are the African imports, and several higher end jewelry stores which contain even more expensive jade, turquoise and other work using precious and semi-precious stones.

While there is indeed a range in price, from District 1's various categories all the way to District 5, what's most interesting is that the price point goes so high at all. While it can be hard to get a grasp on the economic status of Chinese, I learned that Yiwu at least has a substantial number of nouveau riche. This could account for the expense of many of these items. Much cheaper jewelry, such as plastic hair clips and jewelry using glass or rhinestones, is prolific, but one should consider how American jewelers might be able to enter this market. Previously, I'd believed price point would be an issue, but clearly that is not the case.

A wider shot of International Trade City District 1, to convey scale, and to capture the bridge
connecting District 1 to District 2, spanning Shangcheng Avenue. The bridge itself sports
street sellers and small booths.

Near the end of my trip, I returned to Shanghai in preparation of returning to the United States. There, a good friend took me to Tianzifang, one of many cultural districts in the city, and the site of some of the more upscale, experimental and independent art and fashion stores in Shanghai.

Although my time in China certainly didn't give me the opportunity to become an expert, I was able to visit several cities, and get a general feel for the commercial fashion market there, particularly with clothing. In Wuhan, a city with a population of ten million people, and Yiwu, a much smaller city, still with more than a million, what could clearly be observed was the lack of originality, quality of clothing, and the prevalence of brand stores. In addition, clothing at any of the fashionable stores was surprisingly expensive; the most popular brands of pants were 200 RMB and up, which is more than thirty dollars. To understand Tianzifang's significance, this perspective is necessary.

Tianzifang, while containing chain stores, possesses not only independent shops and art galleries, but those chain stores are small, possibly limited to Shanghai, and sport high-quality products, often with good taste and materials. They also, unlike most of the major brands, are more likely to incorporate Chinese styles into a fusion between the contemporary and the traditional. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera that day, and was unable to take photographs.

An examples of this is the fashion and clothing store Feel Shanghai, or Jinfenshijia (the website has only one page thus far). A store known for making traditional Chinese clothing, Feel Shanghai is clean and hip, with staff who speak some English, and most impressively, a line of men's clothing alongside their women's qipao. The work, while "traditional", sports bits of modern materials and motifs that subtly bridge the gap between the old and the new. It is this, along with the good quality and beautiful work, that sets Feel Shanghai apart from the legion of big brand stores that populate most of China. Most notably, the branding itself is both notably Chinese, as well as modern. Feel Shanghai is one of these small chains, containing three branches, two in Tianzifang, and one in Beijing.

Juedaijiaren, or China Beauty, is another store which I visited, which sells silk scarves as well as a handful of other accessories. Although none of the designs were unique, I'm not comparing these stores to handmade craft artists in America; rather, their equivalent should be upper echelon products in department stores, as well as the more exclusive chain brands. In this regard, places like Feel Shanghai and China Beauty compare quite favorably. Chic store layout, good material (this especially should be emphasized when compared with what's used in the big brand companies like Semir, Me&City and Meters/bonwe, the few stores I actually viewed the products of), Asian style, all set China Beauty apart from mainstream stores where the focus is on being Western.

Unique Hill Gallery sells just t-shirts for clothing, with the main emphasis on old Shanghai posters and photos. But it should be mentioned because of the wit displayed by their designs. The best t-shirts aren't found online, but as an example, one shirt that sported the iconic drawing of President Obama in communist cap and shirt captioned "Oba Mao" shows what the new generation of Chinese designers is capable of.

Finally, Shanghai Harvest Studio stood out as one of the few stores selling ethnic jewelry and clothing, albeit at a lower quality, in a metropolitan area. Those readers who are familiar with Chinese ethnic minorities will readily recognize the Miao, whose works were sold in this store. Two Miao ladies were staff there. Again given the preponderant focus on Western trends, what makes a place like Shanghai Harvest Studio exceptional is their interest in selling and propagating traditional Chinese styles.

While I've broached the idea of American involvement in the Chinese marketplace when I was describing Yiwu's International Trade City, I also had conversations with my friend about Chinese companies, specifically smaller scale innovators like those I found in Tianzifang, breaking into the American market. In my eyes, proper cross-pollination will be helpful to both sides of the divide economically and culturally.

Several giant pieces
of turquoise.

More pieces of turquoise. Note the water goblet for scale: the
water is to maintain humidity within the case.

I'll end with a bit of eye candy from my vacation to Wudang Mountain, where according to legend Daoist Zhang Sanfeng created Taichi. Wudang is in Hubei province, where apparently there is a large source of turquoise mines. At the bottom of the mountain, there's an extensive tourist district which included one store selling turquoise jewelry and chunks of the semi-precious stone itself.

Of course in China, one must always be careful of imitations, but it seems very likely that the large turquoise pieces are legitimate. Probably with a turquoise mine in the same province, the jewelry is as well, although most pieces aren't the same quality as the ore. Although only a short encounter, this begs the question of how much semi-precious stones like turquoise China possesses. Certainly of interest to jewelry artists.

The store was quite large, with not only turquoise pendants, necklaces, and
rings for sale, but also some examples of jade. My friend Eric Wang learned
from the sales associates about the turquoise mines that exist in Hubei
province, relatively near to Wudang mountain.

Shibori Dervish: Amy Nguyen

Amy Nguyen
Shibori Dervish
Specialty: Clothing, utilizing Japanese dyeing techniques
Most Recent Craft Show: American Craft Council Show Baltimore 2012
Upcoming Craft Show: CraftBoston (March 23 – 25, 2012)

Silk chiffon shibori stitched scarf, hand dyed, 22" x 80", 2011

Shibori clothing artist, Amy Nguyen, is one of a new vanguard of wearable artists. Combining traditional techniques with a decidedly new flare of fashion, Nguyen's work is a summit of both creativity and ability, the true artist's calling. She plays with light and shadow, delicately illuminating and dispersing the viewer's attention across the garment and the body.

Silk organza shibori coat, hand-dyed, quilted, pieced, 2011

Nguyen's passion is shibori, a Japanese dyeing technique that yields spontaneity even as it allows for a certain degree of control. The textile is folded, tied, and then submerged into dyes; the only certainty in the end result is that the artist can assure that some sections remain free of dye. Repeated dyeing can increase the complexity of the piece's pattern, and yield endless variation.

Though silk is the most well known textile upon which shibori is practiced, Nguyen has branched out to using the technique on linen and wool as well. This merely increases the breadth of work available to her, upon which she continues to orchestrate her overarching theme. Layering of the cloth is similarly vital to her expression of contrast. Strips of silk or linen, each dyed with alternating patterns of dark and light, when put together form a sheer vibration of pattern. The black or deep grays, because of the dye bleed, shift into the white, and back again. The effect can be hypnotic when studied closely, and from afar yields sublime scintillation.

Linen shibori coat, hand-dyed, stitched, pieced, 2011

Nguyen's work is seriously considered; her passion for the shibori method melds with a further interest in Buddhism, resulting in a totality of submersion. She explores new, or rather old, techniques, such as Rozome, or Roketsuzome in the full Japanese, a wax-resist dyeing technique that seemed full of exciting possibilities for her. Her dedication to her main shibori methods, Itajime and Arashi, can be physically intensive, particularly with the latter. Also known as pole-wrapping shibori, the cloth is tightly wrapped around a pole in a diagonal fashion, tied and scrunched, to yield oblique patterns.

Buddhism became an influence for Nguyen through her father, a retired Presbyterian minister with an open appreciation for religion and spirituality the world over. He introduced her to such influential Buddhist writers as Alan Watts, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Pema Chodron, as well as to Zen Buddhism. For Nguyen, her interest in Buddhism again echoes her life's path of that of the intersections between the old and the new. Her relationship with her Vietnamese husband, Ky Nguyen, and his family has built upon this base, by introducing her to what she describes as some "beautiful rituals and traditions" that come from his culture's connection to Buddhism. "There is great respect for ancestry," Amy says." I think of how much I respect the age-old textile traditions and techniques and yet I create my work with a modern aesthetic. The roots are most important, though. Blending the old and new."

Silk chiffon shibori scarf, hand-dyed, stitched, 22" x 80", 2011

Meditation has helped her with her art, particularly slipping into that mindset from which creativity flows effortlessly, like water through a clear streambed. Nguyen describes the calming and clarifying effect of meditation as centering her. Finding the center through meditation and yogic practice reflects Nguyen's approach to both her art and her life. That confluence between poles, the fusion between the traditional and the contemporary, is seen mirrored in her adopting a spiritual lifestyle to adapt to the pressures of modern life. "My creativity can become blocked when fear gets in the way," she explains, a sentiment most artists can easily empathize with. The exploration into the inner self, the awareness derived thereof, has helped her deal with those obstacles. "I feel as though when first starting with meditation you are confronted by emotion and as you progress with meditation you begin to ride the waves of emotion," Nguyen remarks. "You begin to use emotions as an artistic tool."As someone who rides emotions in dancing, I appreciate the insight in Nguyen's statement.

The beauty of Nguyen's work lies in its sublime balance. Balance is difficult, for it means one cannot go to extremes, but must wrestle two opposites into harmonious accord. In her combination of ancient methods with modern flair, Nguyen rides the waves of this boundary, transforming her hard work into seemingly effortless grace.

Her work can be found at www.amynguyentextiles.com.

Layered silk chiffon shibori kimono, hand-dyed, individually hand-cut strips are layered to create dimension with binding in silk shantung, 2011. Customers of Amy Nguyen model her work.