Workshop at GOBI Gallery in Los Angeles

Earlier this year, I collaborated with GOBI Gallery in Los Angeles to host a workshop as part of the exhibition, Staring at the Sun by Christine Yerie Lee. Together we explored the Korean folktale of Bulgasari, a creature born from grains of rice that consumes metal until it becomes a guardian against fire and nightmares.

Participants chose a flower, a seed, and a few grains of rice, pressing them into silver metal clay before placing the pieces into the flame. As the organic material from silver clay burned away, it left behind its exact impression on a silver pendant, carrying the trace of something that no longer existed.

Watching the process unfold around the table, I noticed that everyone approached the same materials differently. Some arranged each grain with intention, while others worked instinctively. The workshop became less about learning a technique and more about observing how people think through their hands.

I've often thought that making is how I understand the world, and this workshop helped me understand why. Making asks us to pay attention. Before anything is created, there is always a moment of looking closely at the texture of a seed, the veins of a leaf, or the shape of a grain of rice. These ordinary things become significant simply because we choose to notice them.

I also realized that jewelry functions as more than an object to wear. It can preserve memories. The silver pendant does not contain the flower or the rice itself, but it holds the memory of their presence. It reminds me that absence can have form in the process of recasting. Bulgasari feels symbolic in this way. A creature born from humble materials becomes a protector, just as an ordinary fragment of nature transforms into something precious through making.

Over 7 years of hosting workshops, my understanding of what I value most in teaching changed. I expected to guide people through a process, but what stayed with me were the conversations that appeared naturally around the table. People compared their choices, shared stories, and became curious about one another's work. The object was important, but it wasn't the center of the experience. The shared act of making was.

It reminded me that my practice has never been solely about producing jewelry. It is about creating space for attention, curiosity, and imagination, and this experience revealed another dimension of my practice, one where making becomes a communal language rather than a solitary one. 

This experience has encouraged me to think differently about future workshops. Rather than teaching techniques alone, I want to design experiences that invite reflection. I want participants to leave not only with something they made, but with a different relationship to the materials they encounter every day, where ordinary objects become vessels for memory, storytelling, and imagination.