In the middle of the first white paper is a drawing of rotten ginger and an Asian pear from a Korean-owned supermarket in Hadley titled, “Trans is so far away.”
In the middle of another white paper is a drawing of a lamp without a shade with an oriental-stylized design, next to a glass vase filled with flowers titled, “Dead Roses.”
In the middle of yet another white piece of paper is a drawing of a glass bottle with Chinese characters on it next to a box of matches (also with Chinese characters) titled, “Pathos in the Soy Sauce Bottle.”
Then, there are small pieces of white parchment, which have white thread sewn into them, depicting scenes of farm houses along Route 2.
“I’ve always liked white. I think that says a lot,” said Katie Yun, the artist behind the papers and pieces of parchment. Her work is on display at Delicatesse, the restaurant, in Shelburne Falls through April, and in the Salmon Falls Gallery from May through June.
“White is such a charged word,” Yun continued. “I’ve always liked white in my work in general. I use the color of white as an entry point to talk about white spaces, white walls of galleries, the ‘white cube,’ the idea of purity and the white space in the work … I think the absence, or the emptiness (in my work) kind of talks about that. It’s very much an acceptance. It’s digestible. It’s lovely to look at.”
Yun, 22, is an artist living in Shelburne — well, at least for a couple more weeks. Then she’ll move to New York City. She grew up in Pasadena, Calif., and went to school at Washington University in St. Louis, majoring in psychology and brain sciences while studying studio art with a concentration in printmaking. She moved to Franklin County this past fall, shortly after graduating, to apprentice under the elite printmaker Peter Pettengill at his Wingate Studio in Hinsdale, N.H.
In addition to being an artist, Yun is also a chef. She recently debuted some of her artwork alongside multi-course dinners in Shelburne. When she moves to New York, she’ll take on a position at one of the most high-profile restaurants in the world.
Yun’s thoughts about living in Franklin County as a Korean-American influence her pieces, which also play off her interest in white space.
“Inserting my body or my experience into a literal ‘white cube,’ which refers to the gallery, kind of speaks to me wanting to assimilate to that white space so badly, but having my body or my experience rejected from it,” Yun said. “I think that’s also one of the things I’m tackling in this work.”
She recalled a moment from a few days earlier while at Delicatesse, which is run by Korean-American and New York native Alice Lee. It was a quiet night at the restaurant, which was hosting a pop-up for tacos and tamales cooked by a resident of Turners Falls. A woman walked up to one of Yun’s pieces and stared at it for a while, saying nothing.
“White space is emptiness. White space is also the color of the work. I think I use the emptiness or the space in between the forms to convey feeling. It’s very still when you look at it,” Yun explained.
The stillness of the drawings — the work Yun whipped up for Lee’s restaurant walls to an outpouring of support thereafter — “makes you look at each aspect of it more.” She continues, “I think I inserted parts of my experience here in subtle ways that people wouldn’t and hopefully still won’t recognize.”
Yun, who also works at Greenfield Coffee and has often seen the city through the lens of a barista behind the counter, said she doesn’t want to talk about her experience in Franklin County; she lets her art do the talking.
“I intentionally didn’t include anything of the environment,” Yun said. “One, because I like it aesthetically, but also, because I think it draws more attention to each object. I think it conveys a stillness or an acceptance I feel about this place.”
Her artwork, as she said, is subtle. Standing in Delicatesse, waiting for a bagel with gravlax and cream cheese, an onlooker might glimpse the drawings of pen on paper or white stitch sewn onto white parchment and simply think of them as pretty. They are, but the objects and the space depicted around them are also very purposeful.
“I think the reason I’m so fascinated by these objects is because there are hints of the oriental,” Yun said. “A hint of oriental is something I see a lot of here. I got that lamp (in her work) at Goodwill. That soy sauce was already there in my house … Then there are things I collected to make me feel safer in this space, like the Spam matches with Chinese characters. It’s not my language or my ethnicity, but just having something cute and pink and ‘Asian’ is really nice.”
She paused and further expressed her frustration: “I don’t know. Like the amount of times people have come to me and said, ‘Try my kimchi,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t really want to.’”
When Yun arrived in Franklin County, she noticed the progressive character of many residents, but still found she felt uncomfortable and out of place, a feeling that, in turn, influenced her pieces.
“As months and months went on, my expectations for this place, my wanting to really love it and be accepted here was slowly diminishing because of the constant comments I was getting,” Yun explained. “I think that’s why I was thinking a lot about my experience here with the pieces … I was thinking about the fact that I will never feel as comfortable here as other people do, or as comfortable as people who want to stay here for the rest of their lives.”
Once, she heard the n-word being thrown around by a white man at Seymour’s, where only a few months earlier, Yun had attended a fundraiser for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Yun confronted the man, explaining that the word was extremely offensive to use.
“I’m sick of always having to talk to people about how problematic they are,” she said. “No one else speaks up. I am so mad about that.”
She reflected on her experience in Franklin County, and in what ways it was similar or different to other environments she lived in previously.
“I think people really empty out things to me as a way to deal with their guilt or as a way to feel like, ‘Look, I see you,’ or as a way to be like, ‘I get it, right? I get it,’ and I get that here, because I’m very visibly not white-passing,” Yun began. “I sometimes feel like people want me to validate them, which makes me feel like a bin that people are emptying things into.”
Her artwork arose from the juxtaposition of the negative and the positive, out of frustration and the desire to belong. The pieces were based on objects in her Shelburne home, which sits on a farm that she shares with other young people.
“There are a lot of beautiful people here,” she said, “and I’ve been really lucky in my experience that I feel safe, for the most part.”
Yun’s embroidered pieces speak to her and her experiences here for a number of reasons. They are domestic in nature, which fits into the craft culture that is prevalent in the county.
She had collectively named the Route 2 embroideries “White Hellscape,” but has since hoped to distance herself from that title.
“I was really angry and I think I was processing a lot of my emotions from feeling like an outsider here,” she said, calling this work more of a meditation, a ritual for her. “For me to copy the landscape I see, but not include people and only these weird, cookie-cutter, barren landscapes off of Route 2 is something I loved playing with, because I’ve never done anything like that before — making landscape work imagery through sewing.”
Embroidery is inexpensive and accessible, but also time-consuming.
“When you sew for hours, you bleed,” Yun said. “It’s extremely violent, but you don’t get any of that in the final product. I really like work that is about process, too.”
Through this process, though, her favorite piece became the one with the rotten ginger and Asian pear.
“I think it’s engaging because it’s so simple,” she said. “There’s a lot of ambiguity in that piece … I think it speaks to a lot of themes that are a little more overt in the others. There are Chinese characters, oriental designs, but if you don’t have the experience of cooking with ginger or Asian pear, you won’t recognize those things.”
You can reach Joshua Solomon at:
jsolomon@recorder.com
413-772-0261, ext. 264