BOXLIFT BOOKENDS. Artists of the Boxlift Building, including Una Kim and Natasia Chan, are holding a group exhibit and open-studio event November 10 and 11.

Pictured are "Twins" by Una Kim and "Pull" by Natasia Chan.

From The Asian Reporter, V17, #45 (November 6, 2007), page 15.

By Josephine Bridges

Of the 20-plus artists with studios in the historic Boxlift Building, Una Kim is the veteran, with six-and-a-half years on site, and Natasia Chan is the new kid on the block, with just three months. "We’re bookends!" quipped Natasia.

Your chance to get to know these two artists — and 16 more — is coming on Saturday, November 10 from 4:00 to 10:00pm and Sunday, November 11 from noon to 5:00pm, with a group exhibit curated by Mark Woolley and 18 open studios. Saturday’s opening night reception includes wine, refreshments, and live Latin sounds, torch songs, funk, and flash by Deja Nu.

"I seem to be very concerned with what art is, and how it’s tied with my immigration experience," Una Kim explains.

A native of Korea, the painter has lived in the United States for 27 years, but is still "awestruck" on a regular basis here. When she first arrived in the U.S., Una Kim learned a lot from the phone book. She remembers discovering governmental structure in the arrangement of city, county, state, and federal agencies, and she was "fascinated by Poison Control." It was here that she found the first of the "codes" she is still looking for, clues as to how this country and its many cultures operate.

Una Kim’s recent work incorporates text in English and Old Korean. "Measuring Instructions" is a collage that combines the bright splashes of color Una Kim is known for with pieces of rulers. "It helps to know that an inch is an inch is an inch," she says.

"X Marks the Spot" and "Do Re Mi" deal with codes found in maps and scales, and several paintings incorporate hopscotch games. "I love numbers," Una Kim confides. The influence of quilts pieced by slave women left behind in Gee’s Bend after the emancipation is evident in a series of patchwork paintings. "I’ve been here longer than I lived there," — Una Kim gestures toward Korea — "but I’m getting more Asian."

By way of contrast, Natasia Chan is a native Oregonian who works with an intentionally limited color palette. Her work in encaustic — wax mixed with resin — painting has gone through four stages. "Story Arc #3" is an example of the first group of work. "This is a painting about people and relationships," she explains as she holds up waxy circles and lines in gray, white, and maroon.

"Wow, you’re doing color!" said Natasia Chan’s friends when she entered Stage Two: "Process Color," in which she uses the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black familiar from four-color printing. Next came "The American Dream," as the artist grappled with "houses, suburbs, the ruts we make in our lives," using images from the ’50s and ’60s found in her family’s photo albums. "My father always tells me, ‘Be safe, be safe,’ and I think of the big risk he took coming to this country. But as an artist, I cannot play it safe. It’s not part of my job description."

Natasia Chan calls her fourth set of paintings "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control" based on a scientist’s suggestion that a lot of cheap robots sent into space are likelier to collect the necessary information than a few expensive ones. "When something good comes out," she says, "it’s my surviving robot."

Encaustic paintings are always highly textural, even the smooth ones like Natasia Chan’s. "All my art is all about layering," she points out.

Some people think of icing on cakes when they look at her paintings, but Natasia Chan especially likes her husband’s comment: "Looking at your work is like looking through a frozen block of ice in a lake."

There’s nothing like getting artists together talking about their own and each other’s work, and that’s only one reason to drop by the Boxlift Building’s group exhibit and open studios. Una Kim calls Natasia Chan’s attention to a silhouette of a headpiece worn in court by government officials in China and Korea that she recognizes in an encaustic painting on the studio wall. "I never use Asian imagery in my work," Natasia Chan jokes as she takes another encaustic out of its box: "But there are random elements. I remember looking at this one after I finished it and thinking ‘Oh my God, it’s Kuan Yin!’"

The Boxlift Building is located at 333 N.E. Hancock Street in Portland. For more information, call (503) 358-8891 or visit <boxliftbldg.googlepages.com>.