We were lucky to catch up with Seojung Lee recently and have shared our conversation below.

Seojung, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of our favorite things to hear about is stories around the nicest thing someone has done for someone else – what’s the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?

When I started my MFA(Master of Fine Art) at Colorado State University,
I was not confident in my English speaking. My advisor Prof. John Gravdhal offered me a full scholarship that can cover tuition and living expenses for teaching undergraduate students one school year. I said I am still not confident in speaking and you can give this offer to another grad student. However, John trusted me and said I could study the material one day before teaching undergraduate students and teach them. He said he was not confident when he started teaching and his mom who was a teacher gave this advice to him. He didn’t pass that offer to another graduate student, so he gave me this chance. My English grew fast while teaching students, and his trust made me to be an adjunct professor at UNCO now. I love teaching and he read my passion for teaching and trusted my design potential. I want to be a teacher like him who can show trust in their potential and wait for my students.

Seojung, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hi! I am Seojung(pronounce like Sou-Jung) and I am a first-generation immigrant artist, designer, researcher, and art educator from Korea. My most recent work is artist’s book(2024) which investigates the in-between/betwixt identities of my immigration experiences as a woman of color in the United States. I validate the perspective that in-between status is normal by making an artist’s book that empowers my personal history and other immigrant stories. Here I create a series of artists’ books using graphic design and printmaking based on Hanji (Korean Dak Paper). Like the transitioning status in my identity, I intertwine and blur the borders between design and art, which imitates the transitioning status in my identity. I also use cyanotype—which is the oldest photographic technique—by using iron compound to create cyan blue color under ultraviolet light. After mixing an iron solution in a darkroom for twenty-four hours, I expose the paper to direct sunlight, using an image I designed on the computer to create the final image. The exposed portions of the design turn blue in sunlight, while the unexposed portions turn white.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

By using post-digital printmaking and cyanotype processes, I want to symbolize and reinforce my status as in-between. My goal in this creative journey is expanding my personal stories into a greater narrative to validate women of color. My hope is acknowledging insights from distinct cultural histories and awakening my intuition to the ways that immigrants contribute to the U.S. by further investigating artists’ books and autoethnographic research, which combines my own experiences with those of other immigrant women to illustrate our stories. This is my mission using art to support the experience of women of color and imagines new pathways forward to validate lives of immigrants in the U.S. 

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect is I make my living with what I want to do. Not many people have the same thing as what they want to do and what they are doing for a living. I love my job as an artist. Art is another language for me. I feel most comfortable when I am working with my hands on paper. This is meditation for me. Also, I love teaching with my art talent and communicating with students. The most rewarding aspect of being an art professor is to see students grow.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://seojung.myportfolio.com
• Instagram: @seojung_lee_graphic_design
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seojung/
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/HO_MbdxyrJw?feature=shared

Image Credits

All image credits by Seojung Lee