Overcome

Feelings of depression and despair are widely relevant these days. Maybe it started with social distancing and just seemed to spread with the world situation. I've had to pick up a lot of the broken pieces lately by helping teachers who took personal leave and finding substitute teachers. This semester has been the most difficult to find substitute teachers due to influenza, corona and emotional problems of teachers.

The teaching qualification exam is just once a year and young teachers who are qualified to substitute but haven't taken the exam are all too busy to come to school and teach. Senior teachers who have recently retired also don't want to come to school and teach. The weather is great and they have their own grandchildren to take care of. The result is that our Vice Principal is doing a lot of substitute teaching and other teachers take turns in break time to teach classes. It's a little extra pay, but a lot of extra headache.

Earlier this year I visited the Arario Gallery in Cheonan about an hour or two from Seoul. The exhibit was entitled "Overcome Such Feelings" by CI KIM. He overcome feelings of despair and fatalism that came with his many business failures. In this exhibit she uses recycled items from daily life to show that things can be used for good even though it looks like it was intended to be thrown away. In the cover picture he used old newspapers and water to make the sculptures and the paintings are made from old coffee grounds.

A time of suffering is followed by dreams

Outstanding in his work is the phrase "A time of suffering is followed by dreams". This is a repeated theme in his work. This time of suffering is represented in the layout of his desk.

One of the exciting things about actually visiting the gallery instead of just looking at prints is to see the workspace of the artist and frame of the paintings. From a photograph we can see the outline of the paintings and the pictures, but we miss the 3D feeling that we get in the gallery.

Everything has a purpose

This artist liked to play with everything from old newspapers to coffee, bones and ping pong balls. Through this medium he expresses themes of dreams, hopes, pain, death, and survival. These days we have all had are fair share of death, pain and survival, but in all of this can our dream survive? I remember when I first started this blog, I had a dream for education and art and kimchi. I met friends with dreams and we inspired each other. Now I find it hard to write even a short article about what is happening over the weekend.

Some of the spark has gone out. It helps when I see Hive back up and people active, but in real life I am swamped more than ever. It seems that it takes most of my free time just to get by each day. These paintings inspired me to use the time of suffering to create art. Even to look at what might be thrown away and find a purpose for it.

A lot of my time has been going into helping my son who has special needs. For years I have been paying for his therapy and for the first time the Office of Education decided to front the bill. They paid for his extra classes for six months. Then at the end they gave him an evaluation test. I told him not to worry about the test and it was better to fail. He really liked the class so worked hard to pay attention and get all the answers right. Then a week later he got a notice that he couldn't participate in the class anymore because he had advanced so well. It's kind of congratulations, but he still needs extra help. Now it is up to me to help him and make some kind of art out of this situation.

It's not hard as long as all the materials are in front of us.

_{This was written for the Weekend-Engagement topics: WEEK 177. I really like this community started by @galenkp but have had a hard time posting anything recently. I'm glad he came up with a simple weekend challenge this week. All the pictures and writing are my own. I'm glad I had some time and strength to share part of my story with you.}

Cheers and good health to you all.