Process of Art Making

Many of us are reluctant to let go of tradition. This tendency is particularly true of artists. The heavy smell of turpentine and the ritual of stretching and priming the canvas of stretched—it’s all so familiar and holy. It connects you forward and backward. But art isn’t meant to be a static practice. It’s a wild, untethered thing, stretching and squirming into whatever shape suits its time. That’s why I’ve found myself lately intrigued by resin. Clear, glossy resin.

Imagine: a petri dish or a massive table of swirling colors, like a galaxy captured mid-spin or like the polished edge of a river stone. Resin art can be uncooperative and can also produce banal results. And yet I persist. I love how it resists my attempts at being “arty.” To start, you’ll need some basics: a two-part resin (the kind that comes with resin and hardener), gloves, stirring sticks, and a mold. Pick something small to begin—a coaster, perhaps.

The next part is all preparation, like a chef gathering and prepping ingredients. Lay down a tarp or some butcher paper because resin doesn’t forgive accidents. Mix your resin and hardener in equal parts, then stir with slow, methodical circles for about two minutes. There’s a moment when the mixture turns clear, which is when you know it’s ready.

Now comes the frustrations. Add pigment: drops of ink or mica powder for a metallic shimmer. Pour into your mold and let the colors bleed together. Use a toothpick to create marbled swirls or leave it be. The resin will do its thing, settling and hardening overnight into something new, unpredictable, and wholly yours.

The next day, peel it free like a chrysalis and marvel at the gloss and the sheer meh of it. Occasionally, though, you’ll find a piece worth keeping. 

Creations

In Korea, there is a quiet expectation that every child will study diligently, attend hagwons, earn top marks, and secure a place at a prestigious university. But I gravitated toward a different story, one that unfolded through paint, clay, and the flicker of ideas shared between artists. I belong to the community of creators, a collective of young people who, like me, have rebelled—if only quietly—against the rigid structures of Korean academic life.

We consider ourselves a group that started as a student-run art collective but became something more: a space where we could breathe. In this community, art is the language we speak, and through it, we explore the complex, often contradictory layers of identity, culture, and resistance. We meet in borrowed rooms, sometimes around kitchen tables crowded with sketches and supplies, sometimes in gallery spaces we’ve fought to secure. The function of art isn’t to hang beautifully in posh, air-conditioned spaces. Art asks questions, pushes boundaries, and finds ways to express the things that can’t easily be said.

My place in this community is both as a creator and a keeper of stories. But more than that, this is where I learned myself, piece by piece. In the act of making, I began to unmake the limits pressed upon me—those tight, familiar rules that told me what I could be. Here, I found room to let my hands speak, to be both artist and student, both Korean and something spilling beyond the borders of what they tell you is possible. Comfortable though it may be, we should never allow ourselves to be subsumed within the frame of someone else’s expectations or needs. We should claim our own space and respect the right of others to do so as well. 

As I walk out into the winter dawn, the light breaks slowly over the distant houses, the staggered roofs that allow morning sensation to take shape. Under each roof, those beams that support the heavens for children that lie in bed, I imagine their dreams, still unbothered by the light beyond. They dream of being an artist in their own right. They want to create something. Some are afraid, afraid in their sleep, afraid awakened. As they do not know that joy of creation, the vastness onto which they can throw their colors. That chaos can jumpstart freedom is what allows us to be ourselves. Even at this early stage in our lives. 

Art as a Bridge

Only two years ago, I had a moment of revelation. The first thing I learned about art was that it wasn’t just mine. When I was younger, I thought of it as solitary endeavor—a tranquil practice, done with my head down, filling the margins of my notebooks with sketches no one else needed to see. But over time, it became clear that art didn’t really exist until someone else looked at it, felt something because of it, and maybe even said so. That’s when I realized art could be more than just an act of creation. It could be a way to connect, to build something bigger than myself.

Community is strange like that. It doesn’t announce itself; it just appears slowly, almost imperceptibly. First, you’re sketching alone, and then someone asks what you’re drawing. Then there are five of you, talking about color and line and how none of it makes sense but somehow it works. Then there are twenty, sharing stories about what art has done for them—or what it hasn’t done, which can be just as important. 

Art, for me, has always been about that shared space. It’s where people meet and where they feel seen, often for the first time. I think back to an old storage facility between the south of Gangnam and where sprawling Gyeonggi province begins, which we renovated into a community center. Though quite bare and minimal, the center, in its inaugural week, attracted guests from near and far. Painting, photographs, even a small sculpture someone had carved out of driftwood adorned the sections in the vast space, as if little creatures found their little nooks for comfort on a cold night.

The exhibition was crowded, not with critics or collectors, but with neighbors and friends. People stood in front of the work, not to judge it but to understand it. They nodded quietly or smiled or asked questions. I watched it all happen and thought – this is art. Not the thing on the wall, but the people gathered around it.

Now, I believe art is always unfinished, like Donatello or Michelangelo’s non finito sculptures—when it leaves room for someone else to add or subtract to it as they see fit. That’s why collaborative projects speak to me, because there is no one single author or artist. In my experience, the best art isn’t revolutionary or profound. The best art functions like a bridge, a way to cross into someone else’s world for a moment. Maybe that’s why I keep doing it—because in a world so often divided, art reminds me that we can still find ways to be together.