Hopes and Dreams

Hope is a waking dream.

Aristotle

Our only hope is to stop, to look, to understand, and to get out of the traps of memory. For memory feeds imagination and imagination generates desire and fear.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

homecoming

/ˈhəʊmˌkʌmɪŋ/

noun

an instance of returning home.

"no records, no family, no homecoming"

pause

pause

/pɔːz/

verb

interrupt action or speech briefly.

"she paused for a moment to feel all the feelings"

noun

a temporary stop in action or speech.

"some pauses have no time frame"

"Since returning from my second visit back to the city I was born in and the country that is no longer mine, I needed to take a pause online to process many things. It has only been a year and eight months since I first learned things like the date I became a U.S. Citizen. Last year in July I submitted my DNA to the Korean National Police for a missing persons birth family search and learned the result...

No matches.

I remind myself that I am not the only one who has these circumstances in life. Right now, there are people who suffering so much worse and that keeps me grounded with everything in perspective. It's incredibly important to keep these things in perspective to keep the ego in check and not to despair. And, although, I am not religious, anytime I begin to despair or feel sorry for myself, I think of this quote from a book and film that I particularly adore and reread at least once a decade:

"To despair is to turn one's back on God."

One of the countermeasures I took was to donate blood to the NHS. I have never donated blood before. I was surprised when I received a call from the NHS asking me to set up an appointment after submitting a mouth swab just a few days earlier. This couldn't have been more timely in happening. I had learned my DNA submission results to the Korean National Police on the Monday before the donation appointment, and that my blood type, B positive, is essential for treating those with sickle cell disorder and thalassaemia who need regular transfusions. So, whether or not my DNA ever helps me find out any more details about the circumstances of my adoption or a member of my birth family, there is a silver lining.... my DNA is helping someone out there to live."

Walls Within Exhibition Update

Omma Poom Park Peace Museum

15 June 2025 - ongoing

Omma Poom Park and Peace Museum Bongilcheon-ri, Paju, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea

"For two days, my series Walls Within was on display in the park during this special event alongside other creations by some of my fellow KADs. The park director, Yong Nam Lee and I decided to extend the exhibition at the conclusion of the grand opening event. Since July 2025, Walls Within has been kept on display in the Peace Museum. I received photos of WW from a fellow KAD friend and Londoner who visited them earlier this year. One more person who now knows Kori Marrone to whom the four lanterns are dedicated to in memoriam."

In September of 2018, the Omma Poom Park in Paju City was formally dedicated at a ceremony attended by local government officials, Korean adoptees from all over the world, birth families, and supporters of the adoptee community. Since the dedication, the work on the park continued, and its formal opening took place this summer of 2025.

The date was set for the grand opening... there was a two-day celebration organized by Me&Korea, a non-profit organization that provides Korean adoptees opportunities to learn about our roots, on the thirteenth and fourteenth of June. I attended this celebration by first traveling to the city I was born in, Seoul, and then to Paju with a fellow KAD, a dear friend who is currently traveling the world solo.

The city of Paju, Korea is located just south of Panmunjeom at the 38th parallel and Demilitarized Zone. Beginning in 2017, Paju began developing a memorial park named Omma Poom, dedicated to the approximately 200,000 children who were sent away to be adopted and raised around the world.

The park’s name, Omma Poom, carries deep significance: "Omma" means "mother" in Korean, and "Poom" evokes the comfort of a mother’s embrace. The park is designed to serve as both a tribute and a space for healing.

La separacion y el reencuentro estan predestinados Update

A few months ago, I received an update about this piece of me, and a photo from its caretaker, of it in its new home in the Dominican Republic

"La separacion y el reencuentro estan predestinados" means separation and reunion are predestined.

This is commisioned heartwork I made a during the tail-end of the COVID pandemic while living in Madrid. It was made in memoriam of loved ones who have passed from this world into the next and exhibited once. It is an infinity piece with several scenes that all flow into each other. Here you see the three of the five doves, whose tails become the clouds and ocean waves crashing into the cliffs of a mountain over which the lead dove carries a lily in it's beak. 

How lovely to see the care and attention given to its display. Set upon a small mirrored side table so the small details above and below, inside and underneath, may be viewed.

Be still my heart.

Dreams...

Now that the mourning period has passed, there is space and time for dreaming. As some of you know, I have been dreaming about painting for a long time now, which is why it began appearing on my clay surfaces. Since the length of my time in London is so uncertain, and I have spent a good amount of it in a different way than I had originally anticipated, I have decided not to have hands in clay but to hold brushes instead. A tiny home studio awaits me in my kitchen where the light is best.

I have also been dreaming about what to do with my photography from the past few years' adventures. You are seeing some results above in the two portraits of myself shared. Heavily filtered and slightly altered, a memory of a moment and how I felt before my world came crashing down, when I still had hope for that one thing that wasn't to be while visiting the city of my birth.

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