Artist Book series
Artist Books
Handmade narratives of life, women’s stories, and daily memories by Jaclyn Bae
Artist Book I — Seasons of Human Life
Collaged seasons and shifting silhouettes of a life.
Seasons of Human Life explores how a single life moves through changing emotional and physical seasons. Pages are built from collaged magazine papers in shifting colors and textures, suggesting spring, summer, autumn, and winter. On the facing pages, silhouettes of human figures echo these transitions — growing, bending, pausing, and moving forward again.
The book reads like a quiet visual diary: the outer seasons of nature and the inner seasons of the heart layered together, one spread at a time. The use of collaged magazine paper is intentional, transforming discarded commercial images—remnants of popular culture and fleeting desires—into a sustained, personal narrative. The layering of textures and colors within each 'season' creates a profound visual density, emphasizing that human experience is never monochromatic but rich with complexity and contradiction. Furthermore, the human silhouette, being deliberately featureless, allows the viewer to project their own experiences onto the page, making the personal journey of the artist universally relatable. This technique reinforces the theme of "women's stories," suggesting that while the emotional seasons change, the core human experience of growth and renewal remains a shared, powerful cycle.
Magazine paper collage mapping the four seasons of a life
Artist Book II — The Seasons
A continuous accordion of woodblock-printed time.
The Seasons is a handmade accordion book printed with woodblocks on fabric and rice paper. When fully opened, the book becomes a single flowing strip — like a path you can walk with your eyes. Each impression carries traces of growth, memory, and quiet change, moving from one end of the book to the other.
The work invites the viewer to read time not as separate moments, but as one continuous rhythm of becoming. The woodblock printing technique itself is deeply symbolic here. The manual process ensures that each impression holds subtle, unavoidable imperfections—a variation in color or pressure—which mirrors the imperfect, non-uniform reality of growth and memory. The repetitive act of printing on the flowing accordion strip reinforces the idea of time as an ongoing, continuous practice rather than a series of disconnected events. The book's leporello structure physically embodies the theme: when unfurled, the entire 'path' of the seasons is visible at once, transforming sequential time into a simultaneous landscape, inviting contemplation on life's interconnected cycles. The blend of resilient fabric and delicate rice paper further emphasizes the dual nature of existence—fragile yet enduring.
Artist Book III — Life of Women
A quiet archive of women’s shared experiences.
Life of Women is a narrative artist book composed of personal photographs — from childhood to marriage, motherhood, and aging. Though rooted in the artist’s own story, the work opens onto a broader landscape of women’s lives: growing up, loving, raising children, and facing time.
The images are transferred with blender marker onto Korean papers, then framed within a rice-roll mat structure. The format recalls family albums and scrolls, holding fragments of memory that feel both intimate and universal. The unique rice-roll mat structure is not merely a frame; it is a profound nod to traditional Korean scrolls and archive keeping, suggesting a continuous, unfolding narrative of life rather than disconnected pages. The fusion of Korean papers with images transferred via a modern blender marker visually encapsulates the theme of cultural identity and the immigrant experience—weaving ancient heritage with contemporary life. This delicate, fragmented transfer process ensures that the images are ghost-like and imperfect, emphasizing the elusive, fragile nature of personal memory and the universal, shared emotional journey of women across generations.
Photo-transfer images tracing a woman’s life stages.
Artist Book IV — My Daily Life
Hand-stitched moments rolled into a private ledger.
My Daily Life gathers small scenes from everyday routine — stitched by hand onto momigami paper. The pages are rolled and stored in a rice-roll mat, as if keeping a personal ledger of ordinary days. Colored threads weave through empty spaces, suggesting invisible ties with family, home, and memory.
The book reads slowly. Each stitched line feels like a quiet note, written not with ink but with time and patience. The material choice of momigami paper is deeply intentional. Known for its hand-kneaded texture and surprising resilience, it transforms the fragile moments of the everyday into something enduring, symbolizing the tough, yet beautiful, nature of routine. The act of hand-stitching itself—a slow, patient process—serves as a meditative counterpoint to modern fast-paced life. Each thread not only marks a memory but physically connects the disparate moments on the page. The use of colored threads to weave across empty spaces emphasizes the unseen but persistent bonds of family and home that define the private ledger, suggesting that absence or silence in life is often filled by these strong, quiet ties.
Materials: momigami paper, hand-stitching, rice-roll mat · Artist: Jaclyn Bae
Related Work — Hanbok Series
From the sculptural intimacy of artist books to the cultural form of the hanbok, the Hanbok Series extends these narratives into garments made of linen, hemp, and denim — exploring heritage, memory, and transformation. The juxtaposition of traditional hanbok silhouettes with repurposed contemporary materials like denim creates a powerful visual dialogue about cultural identity in the modern era. The choice of linen and hemp speaks to the historical longevity and quiet resilience inherent in traditional Korean textiles, while the denim layers signify the ongoing process of adapting and reweaving one's heritage within a new cultural landscape. These garments function as wearable sculptures that transcend simple clothing; they are physical manifestations of the artist’s own journey, blending the intimacy of personal history with the collective, formal memory embedded in the cultural form of the hanbok.
© Jaclyn Bae 2025 · All rights reserved
Comments
Post a Comment