An Autumn Celebration Through Feasting and Meditation
This coming Friday is Chuseok, the Korean harvest festival holiday that I only learned about in recent years from other KADs. Some have likened it to Thanksgiving but other than celebrating the harvest with family, it is nothing like it. Thanksgiving is the pretend-story of peace and friendship of First Nation Native Americans and foreign colonizers who chose to settle on lands that did not belong to them gathering together and sharing a meal in solidarity. The Korean celebration of Chuseok is based on a belief that ancestors return to share a meal and be with relatives, both living and deceased. The tradition includes cleaning and tidying family gravesites, playing traditional games, wrestling and circle dances. Needless to say, this is not a holiday I have any desire or a need to celebrate. There is no one to celebrate it with or for. No moon cakes will be consumed by me.
I can already hear someone thinking "but you could still celebrate it with friends" and I cannot disagree more. Traditions and particular holidays have their reasons and their roots. For me or anyone who is not Korean, it would merely be a performative gathering with no real depth or meaning to all us cultural and social outsiders. This expat will continue to break her own path. To forge her own destiny. To create my own traditions that fit the reality of my circumstances... because the truest and most honest things I know are the changing of the seasons, the sun and the moon, winds and rain, the sea, the land, and the sky.
So, celebrate the Chuseok if you wish. Thanksgiving in November, too. But, as the world homogenizes, let us not forget one of the two most important days of the year, the Autumn Equinox, when light and dark are perfectly equal. The day when the end and the beginning are happening simultaneously in total balance.
Recently friends and I gathered to celebrate the change of seasons and the Autumnal Equinox, a few days early. This modern life is at times rather inconvenient to these celebratory days that once used to really matter.
The elements of our meal were composed around this bottle of wine purchased last year on the road trip, moving a van full of belongings that were too delicate and precious to ship of fly over, with a friend. The white wine by the same winery (mentioned in a diary entry) was drunk at last year's Autumnal Equinox and it somehow seemed fitting to have the red this year.
On the menu were slow-cooked beef short ribs, sweet potatoes, green beans, pomegranate kale salad, and a nearly Waldorf salad. For dessert, four different cheeses, fresh apple slices, seeded crackers, a homemade apple and tomato chutney, and a selection of gluten-free treats.
Today we celebrate nature and the changing season, the balance between light and dark, between work and rest, between reflection and action, and pilgrimage. For me, this journey is not in forest, field or climbing mountains but on pebbled beaches with nowhere to hide, exploring the landscape of myself. A few days ago, I began putting oil paint to stretched canvas in my tiny kitchen studio. A small series of past, present, future. Of hope, a wish, and a dream.
Silver and Gold
I spoke of Hurtado and his verdejo wine, Limousin, to a friend living in Norway who adores white wines. This sent him on a wild adventure searching for it. He visited and checked with over forty different wine shops over the course of nearly two months before finally finding an online purveyor who could ship him two bottles at a not very reasonable shipping cost. Unable to find the 2023 Gran Vino de Rueda, he settled for the 2024. Of course I was quite nervous when it did finally arrive because it might not suit his taste and he had gone to so much effort to obtain it. With a vinyl album carefully selected to accompany it, he partook and shared his impressions of it with me as he sipped and listened.
I don't believe in coincidences ... somehow the arrival of the wine and receiving this photo happened within the same week.
Recently I met up with a friend who I had not seen for several months because life. In our message exchanges, she sent me a photo of an old friend keeping her company. One in a series of flower vases made in tribute to a Spanish aristocrat who became a farmer - Camilo Hurtado de Amezaga y Balmeseda. Also known as the Marques do Riscal, a man who became a winemaker that supplied a Spanish king, for which the winery is also named.
That winery still exists today in the village of Elciego, producing both red and white wines.
While visiting the winery last year in April, I was sad to discover that the famous golden netting that Hurtado had created was no longer in use as a part of their sustainability mission. Long ago the netting on his red wine for the king had been made from real gold and needed to be broken to access the contents. It was a seal of authenticity of the wine inside during a time when thieves would replace what they had stolen with another vintage and recork the bottle. Later this famous invention was copied and mimicked with golden wires as a sign of the wine and winemaker's quality. Unless you are a wine connoisseur, this once commonly-known feature has been largely forgotten.
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.
Upcoming Exhibition
Omma Poom Park Grand Opening
13 & 14 June 2025
Omma Poom Park and Garam Art Hall Bongilcheon-ri, Paju, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea
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 has continued, with its formal opening set to take place in the summer of 2025.
The date has been set for the grand opening... there will be 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 will be attending 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.
For two days, my series Walls Within will be on display in the park during this special event alongside other creations by some of my fellow KADs.
This event is open to adoptees, adoptive and birth families, and the general public.
Special Holiday Deliveries
Inner Peace in its new home in Dublin, Ireland.
There is pleasure in hand delivering and being asked to install one's own work in the home of a new caretaker. The intimacy and honor of that experience are incredibly humbling.
Planet Earth No. 1 in its new home in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Open Studio
Autumnal Equinox
21 & 22 September 2024
11:00 - 15:00
For two days in 2024, I will open my studio to share a new body of work on the weekend of the Autumnal Equinox. I'll be showing a series of sculptures, static and kinetic.
Thank you to all who came!
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