https://yeemee.pb.studio
My art has been exploring some continuous themes: ethnicity, nature, visual poetry, colors, pattern, line, light/dark, utility, ordinary life and spiritual life. Having studied fine arts, crafts, architecture and traveled to the East and West, I’ve been impressed by global arts and crafts, vernacular architecture and slow fashion. As a practical arts teacher, mother of 3 and student, I make art everyday. In teaching and training, I do so in teaching samples and student work. In parenting, I do so in conversation, cooking, home/garden making and in traditional media. In all of those roles, I’ve also begun making and teaching art as activism.
Culture, color, pattern and light show up in my painting of “Asian + American”. There fine, precise lines are used on a girl’s face, next to broad strokes of magenta and red, as well as details of silver and gold Chinese patterns on her costume. She’s set against a deep blue night sky, lit by stars and a crescent moon. It was a kind of Asian surrealism and pop art that I’d been seeing for years through LA’s Giant Robot Gallery.
Skin colors are organically talked about by 60 of my teenage students annually, while selecting doll cotton: creme, peach, tan, brown, black. The discussions go on when picking hair yarn textures. Then some more when choosing clothing patterns from various ethnic cultures. One of my Brazilian students made his favorite anime character by modifying a Japanese kimono pattern into a samurai costume.
Lines translate into stitches in the machine sewing and hand printing of my stationery art. Lines also crossover into my digital drawings of portraits, nature and maps. The continuous line of thick yarn and thin threads grow and take 3-D form in my teaching samples and personal works of knitted hats, crocheted bags, macramed planters and embroidered tags and bags.
Yarn continuously extends this line and takes the form of wearable knitted hats, for both of my 5th grade classes. We are currently making “Pussy Hats” for Girls’ and Women’s Rights. I renamed them kitty cat hats. For distance learning, it's simply a knitted rectangle that’s folded and stitched on both sides, the peaks of the fold create cat ears at the top.
Lines have also been present in the structural skeleton and define 3-D space and place in architectural design, like in my Modular Home. There I also explored the translucency and opacity of materials, revealing that structure, and concealing privacy. The unit was simple but detailed, and inspired by Japanese design. It had an operable, retracting roof that exposed itself to nature. It was an ecological, kit-of-parts structure designed to be factory-made, delivered and assembled on-site.
Silk prayer flags were painted in quiet reflection by me and hundreds of students and their parents, in anticipation of our school’s long awaited new campus construction. The flags were an adaptation of the Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags that crisscross in lines across the Himalayan Mountains. Our versions were also filled with wishes, both seen and unseen, to celebrate the union of our lower and upper grades.
Covid face masks were not yet available early last spring, so I immediately made them for my family. I then made more for my school’s construction workers and more for a West LA homelessness organization. I reused remnant cotton from years of teaching 8th grade clothing construction. I combined 2 mask designs that could accommodate work goggles/glasses and wrap under the chin for dust particles.
My belief is that art can be both ordinary and extraordinary, self-referential and of service to others, poetic and practical, visible and felt anytime and anywhere. We can make it as students, as teachers, as parents and as community members. It can be simple and powerful in its gestures and numbers. Hundreds of silk prayer flags holding wishes for a school can be carried by the wind. Sixty 5th graders can wear handmade girls’ rights hats on a school camping trip. Hundreds of home sewn masks can be worn by workers on a school construction site and homeless workers on the streets of LA. A singular painting of my daughter in her Vietnamese ao dai made just for me. Art is everywhere, small and large.
My art has been exploring some continuous themes: ethnicity, nature, visual poetry, colors, pattern, line, light/dark, utility, ordinary life and spiritual life. Having studied fine arts, crafts, architecture and traveled to the East and West, I’ve been impressed by global arts and crafts, vernacular architecture and slow fashion. As a practical arts teacher, mother of 3 and student, I make art everyday. In teaching and training, I do so in teaching samples and student work. In parenting, I do so in conversation, cooking, home/garden making and in traditional media. In all of those roles, I’ve also begun making and teaching art as activism.
Culture, color, pattern and light show up in my painting of “Asian + American”. There fine, precise lines are used on a girl’s face, next to broad strokes of magenta and red, as well as details of silver and gold Chinese patterns on her costume. She’s set against a deep blue night sky, lit by stars and a crescent moon. It was a kind of Asian surrealism and pop art that I’d been seeing for years through LA’s Giant Robot Gallery.
Skin colors are organically talked about by 60 of my teenage students annually, while selecting doll cotton: creme, peach, tan, brown, black. The discussions go on when picking hair yarn textures. Then some more when choosing clothing patterns from various ethnic cultures. One of my Brazilian students made his favorite anime character by modifying a Japanese kimono pattern into a samurai costume.
Lines translate into stitches in the machine sewing and hand printing of my stationery art. Lines also crossover into my digital drawings of portraits, nature and maps. The continuous line of thick yarn and thin threads grow and take 3-D form in my teaching samples and personal works of knitted hats, crocheted bags, macramed planters and embroidered tags and bags.
Yarn continuously extends this line and takes the form of wearable knitted hats, for both of my 5th grade classes. We are currently making “Pussy Hats” for Girls’ and Women’s Rights. I renamed them kitty cat hats. For distance learning, it's simply a knitted rectangle that’s folded and stitched on both sides, the peaks of the fold create cat ears at the top.
Lines have also been present in the structural skeleton and define 3-D space and place in architectural design, like in my Modular Home. There I also explored the translucency and opacity of materials, revealing that structure, and concealing privacy. The unit was simple but detailed, and inspired by Japanese design. It had an operable, retracting roof that exposed itself to nature. It was an ecological, kit-of-parts structure designed to be factory-made, delivered and assembled on-site.
Silk prayer flags were painted in quiet reflection by me and hundreds of students and their parents, in anticipation of our school’s long awaited new campus construction. The flags were an adaptation of the Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags that crisscross in lines across the Himalayan Mountains. Our versions were also filled with wishes, both seen and unseen, to celebrate the union of our lower and upper grades.
Covid face masks were not yet available early last spring, so I immediately made them for my family. I then made more for my school’s construction workers and more for a West LA homelessness organization. I reused remnant cotton from years of teaching 8th grade clothing construction. I combined 2 mask designs that could accommodate work goggles/glasses and wrap under the chin for dust particles.
My belief is that art can be both ordinary and extraordinary, self-referential and of service to others, poetic and practical, visible and felt anytime and anywhere. We can make it as students, as teachers, as parents and as community members. It can be simple and powerful in its gestures and numbers. Hundreds of silk prayer flags holding wishes for a school can be carried by the wind. Sixty 5th graders can wear handmade girls’ rights hats on a school camping trip. Hundreds of home sewn masks can be worn by workers on a school construction site and homeless workers on the streets of LA. A singular painting of my daughter in her Vietnamese ao dai made just for me. Art is everywhere, small and large.