AND NOW BY HAND
KE-SOOK LEE | MARGO KREN | SUNYOUNG PARK
February 1 – March 30 | 2025
Opening Reception February 1 | 1 – 4pm
Conversation with Margo Kren and SunYoung Park at 2pm
Nearly every artist, regardless of formal training or medium, can recall an experience with a blank piece of paper.
Art students take drawing courses for fundamentals, sculptors sketch out ideas, and for some artists, drawing – or the spirit of its connotations – is their final work. In contrast, drawing often springboards into other projects, serving as a catalyst for a future work at a larger scale or in a different medium.
AND NOW BY HAND features the work of Ke-sook Lee, Margo Kren, and SunYoung Park. Each artist broadens the horizon of what we view as drawing. The exhibition’s title also leans into the different perspectives of three women who share an interest in works on paper, but approach it in their own unique way. Drawing on past experiences, personal history, and their artistic motivations, Lee, Kren, and Park imbue their works with distinct qualities unique to their life and experience. Despite what they might use to create — tape, thread or colored pencils — these artists draw us into their perspective.
KE-SOOK LEE
continues to expand drawing in her
Ode to Seed
works, made with hand stitched thread and homemade rice paper. On drawing and her work, Lee writes on her website: “Holding my inheritance and thread in one hand / reaching out to contemporary drawing with the other hand, / My work continues freeing itself / from boundary of art making / cultivating to find / my identity and feminine aesthetics.”
Ode to Seed, which was published in December 2024, follows Lee’s self-described trajectory. The book follows the story of a hopeful seed on its odyssey to become a plant. Alice Thorson, editor of
KC Studio, and an essayist in Lee’s book, writes, “Lee is a mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, Korean American and internationally exhibited artist. In fact, the seed’s journey represents her own… It is at heart, an autobiographical story, encompassing all the struggles, dreams, desires and ultimate triumph of Lee’s will to prevail as an artist and independent woman.” Lee utilizes thread, fabric, ink and watercolor to illustrate the story, each carrying a symbolic or personal theme.
Ode to Seed
is a print on demand Blurb book. To learn more or place an order, click
here
Note: The original sketchbook will be on display in the exhibit.
ARTIST STATEMENT | The sketchbook
Ode to Seed is made with thread, recycled remnant paper and fabric pieces from my previous work, that embodies history of searching for identity and the struggle of growth with hope. Often these thread and fabrics was bathed with acrylic pigment mixture in my studio.
Holding thread and needle with my fingers, stitching breath by breath, in and out of fabric or rice paper surface leaving the marks behind, I claim as drawing. Incorporating stitched marks from front page, stitched drawing marks continues the journey, to be born as a live plant.
As if I found a piece of fabric once belong to my grandmother: the tiny strings of thread dangling on her worn skirt, bring back memories of her passion for sewing and embroidery, which in turn possessed her hopes and dreams. The thread drawing sketchbook
Ode to Seed,
made by using fiber remnants from previous work on hand made rice paper, the drawing embraces the spiritual quality of previous work, while a seed struggles to be alive as a plant, to grow to bloom.
Ke-Sook Lee
1/18/2025
Read more:
Artist Pages | “Ke-Sook Lee’s ‘Ode to Seed’ A quietly dramatic odyssey of triumph” by Alice Thorson, editor,
KC Studio, January/February 2025.
BIO | Ke-Sook Lee(Oh) (b. 1941) is known for fiber installation and hand embroidered drawing works exploring abstraction and domestic themes. She was born in Seoul, Korea in 1941 and moved to the US in 1964. She earned a BFA in Applied Art from Seoul National University 1963, and her second BFA in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1982. She lives and works in Berkeley, CA.
Ke-Sook has been represented by and exhibited at the George Billis Gallery New York and Los Angels, Artlink Gallery, Seoul, Korea. Her work has shown at the Museum of Arts and Design (NY), Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PA) Riverside Museum of Art (LA), Spencer Museum of Art (KS), Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (KS), Philadelphia Art Alliance (PA),), Trunk Gallery (Seoul), Park Eul Bok Embroidery Museum (Seoul), Ami Art museum (Dangjin), and international exhibitions held in Berlin, London, Paris, Florence, Ireland.
Among public collections, her work is in Spencer Museum of Art (KS), Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (KS), Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PA), Nelson Atkins Museum of Art (MO), Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul), Park Eul Bok Embroidery Museum (Seoul), Racine Museum of Art (WI).
MARGO KREN
was an art professor at Kansas State University for 31 years. During that time, as she did before her teaching tenure, Kren kept a robust studio practice that explored countless mediums. Kren recently worked with photographer Jon Blumb to document and archive the vast portfolio she created over sixty years. Thirty-six categories of work on a spread sheet invite an intimate look into the life of an artist: how and why she makes work, and what her life is like along the way. Titles like “A Year Within Four Walls,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Broken Borders,” “Dreams and Memories” “Four Birds,” “Get Cracking,” “Keyhole,” “Lone Bird,” “The Material and the Spiritual,” “Schr-ot,” “the Seeker,” “Snook’s Jazz,” and “Tabula Rasa” are as provocative as the descriptions she writes of each body of work. Her memory is sharp. She talks as if she made the work yesterday. Her thoughts about politics and war, her affection for her husband, her interest in printmaking with bread, all find their way into her work.
Her art begins with drawing. She speaks of charcoal, pastels, Prisma pencils, collage, acrylic, oil painting, lithographs. “In 1980, I completed a year’s work of eighty drawings using Prisma pencils on black Arches paper. Then, in 1981, I selected sixteen drawings to be turned into lithographs and completed them in 1986.” She talks about what she wants to make and the experiments she undertakes. She listens to jazz as she works. Her written words reveal the mind of an artist as clearly as does her art.
ARTIST STATEMENT | Working with tapes only was an assignment I gave myself in the summer of 1976. For this project, I decided I would use only adhesive tapes on white archival paper (9” x 12”). I began to collect all kinds of adhesive tapes that had been designed for different purposes – tape for shaping a woman’s wet single curl of hair on to her cheek to dry, tennis racket tape, floral tape, tape to put over a door to signify “radiation inside,” medical tape from my dermatologist father-in-law, duct tape, library tape to seal off worn ends of books, and the wide decorative metallic tapes found on motor cycles. I found a lot of unusual tapes in New York City’s Pearl, the world’s largest discount art supplier, then located on Canal Street in New York City. This store is no longer in existence.
Here I am, an 85-year-old artist giving a show of these works at the Volland Store Gallery in Kansas – a show of my tape collages completed in 1976. At that time, I was a young artist of 37 years. I have made art all my life and these tape works are just as fresh as the day that I made them. But time has taken its toll and left its marks in minor ways. For example, one work had a tape that had discolored with age. Yet that has not changed either the content or the composition. It is a nice fit.
BIO | Margo Kren (b. 1939) was born in Houston, Texas, and spent most of her life in the Midwest. In 1966 she received her BS from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and in 1979 her MFA from the University of Iowa, Iowa City. She taught at Kansas State University, Manhattan,, Kansas, for 31 years and retired as Professor of Art, Emerita, in 2003. Kren was invited to teach painting and drawing at the Jilin College of Art, Changchun, P.R. China, Spring semester 2005. She was a visiting artist to the Instituto Allende, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; College D’Enseignement Artistique et Artisanal, Kpalime, Togo, West Africa; Academy of Art and Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R. China.
Her work has been exhibited at the Downy Museum of Los Angeles, California; the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; the University of Durban, Westville, South Africa; the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institute in Regensburg, Germany; Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia; Yunnan Art Institute, Kunming, Yunnan, P.R. China and The Kawasaki Factory, Tokyo, Japan. Kren’s work is featured in Le Blues Braillant (The Blues Cryin’) book, text by the poet, Beverly Matherne, publisher Cross-Cultural Communication, New York and in little magazines: Helicon Nine, New Letters, Tight Rope and Stiletto.
Kren received an N.E.A. grant in 1982, and attended Yaddo in 1989. She was awarded the Governor’s Art Award of Kansas in 1989, and the Kansas Arts Commission Artist Fellowship Award in 2000. In 1989 she received The Kansas State University’s Distinguished Graduate Faculty Member Award. Her work is in various public and private collections. Kren has been active in the promotion of the arts on a statewide level, including a stint as president of the Kansas City Artists Coalition in 1982.
SUNYOUNG PARK
employs drawing as we most often recognize it. In her small, playful depictions of amorphous forms, Park marries “intangible fragments of thoughts, imagination, and memories… blurring the lines between reality and imagination and inviting the viewer to experience that in-between space where dreams and reality collide.” The play between hard and soft, real and imagined in Park’s work points to the artist’s intrapersonal tensions. Park was born in South Korea and travels back to her homeland regularly. While studying and building her career in the United States, Park’s memories of home are impacted by a differing heritage and culture. Park maps these thoughts in her work for the viewer to reflect on.
ARTIST STATEMENT | Through drawing, I navigate the dualities of my identity and the interplay between memory and imagination. Using fine lines, textured surfaces, and layered marks, I translate fleeting moments and emotional tensions into visual narratives. The simplicity of graphite and colored pencil offers a directness that reflects the rawness of my subjects, while the layering of media mirrors the complexity of my cultural heritage and personal experiences. My drawings invite viewers to explore contrasts—softness and rigidity, control and spontaneity—prompting reflection on the delicate balance of opposing forces in our lives.
Read more: Artist Pages | ”SunYoung Park: Ambiguous narratives and wild imaginings in colored pencil” by Dana Self, KC Studio, October 7, 2024
BIO | SunYoung Park (b. 1990 South Korea) navigates the intersection of imagination and reality, using diverse materials to express contrasting surfaces, focusing on ceramics and mixed media. She earned her BFA and MFA from Hong-Ik University in Seoul and an MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Park has exhibited nationally and internationally, participating in residencies at the Clayarch Gimhae Museum, Charlotte Street Foundation, and the Wassaic Project. Her work has been shown in prestigious exhibitions, including the Jingdezhen International Ceramic Art Biennale, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. She lives and works in Kansas City, Missouri.
On Saturday, February 1 Volland will reopen its gallery for the year 2025.
Join us to launch the exhibit, AND NOW BY HAND, meet Margo Kren and SunYoung Park, and learn more about their work. The gallery opens at 1pm, and a conversation with the artists begins at 2pm.
Light refreshments will be served. Free admission.
The Volland Foundation extends its gratitude to Alice Thorson, KC Studio
magazine, Jon Scott Anderson, John Hans, Jon Blumb and the Spencer Museum of Art for their contributions of printing, documenting, advising, loaning, and permissions to make
AND NOW BY HAND possible.
