Jeong

Mixed Media: paper mulberry tree bark cloth, gold pigment ink
15 x 15 inches
2021

I recently learned a new art process, the traditional art and craft of making kapa, Hawaiian bark cloth, using the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree. The process is time consuming and physically intensive requiring soaking the bark in water for days, hours of beating the bark on a stone anvil with wooden sticks followed by folding and unfolding the bark then beating the bark again on a wooden block with wooden sticks or mallets, then drying the kapa.

Jeong is a Korean word which is difficult to translate into English. Jeong is more a concept that can be described as “deep-seated love, affection, compassion, sympathy, bond, attachment, care, interconnection, interdependence and solidarity, The word is embodied by the collective nature of Korean society. The year of the pandemic clearly revealed how interconnected our global world is and how we need to stand together against injustice to create change.