Thursday, March 19, 2015

40 facts about mama. A special post dedicated to The Hive 2015



"Passage" blog entry of the 10th of April 2013

  • 1. By age 4 I had lived in 3 different continents.
  • 2. My fist childhood memories bring me back to South Korea.
  • 3. By the way… I still loooove Kimchi.
  • 4. My father is South-Korean/Chinese/Hawaiian, therefore I am Italian/South-Korean/Chinese/ Hawaiian.
  • 5. I was raised in a family of artists: mother dancer, father illustrator, grandpa painter, grandma ceramist, uncle ceramist, aunt painter.
  • 6. When I was 6 my parents decided they would become puppeteers. So they did. Seriously! And me and my brother have been traveling around the world through puppet festivals all the time since then.
  • 7. I am a professional stilt-walker. I learned at age 15 and my father was so scared I’d brake myself in pieces that he learned to walk on stilts as well. Then my brother learned, then my mother learned and we created a family stilt theatre company.
  • 8. My parents met in New York in their early twenties and I was born just shortly after.
  • 9. I met my husband in New York in my early twenties and my son was born just shortly after.
  • 10. Me and my husband were living together a day before we met (what??? Yes, in NYC everything is possible.)
  • 11. In New York, I was living for 7 months at the 4th floor of a historical experimental theatre called LaMaMa ETC, in the East Village. I was also, later on, living for two months in the basement of a Chinese family in Queens, but that’s a different story.
  • 12. In New York I was studying at the School of Visual Arts while working for LaMaMa ETC, working in a Japanese bakery and as a model for figure drawing classes in 5 different places in town. Had to pay for all that pad-thai.
  • 13. My son was conceived in Colombia. My husband is Colombian. Oh, wait, he’s actually Colombian/German/British/Indian. Thus my son is Italian/South-Korean/Chinese/Hawaiian/ Colombian/German/British/Indian. Holy moly.
  • 14. Me and my husband got married in a living room in Bogota, but decided to become parents in the countryside of Italy.
  • 15. I gave birth at age 21, on a snowy day, roaring like a mad grizzly bear, with the presence of my husband and of the celestial music he composed especially for that moment.
  • 16. Later on we had to pick a place to build our nest: New York was too hectic, Italy was too calm, Bogota was just too much altogether so we opted for Berlin without ever having seen it before. We’ve been living there since 2012, so far so good!
  • 17. Due to geographical issues, I had to learn 3 languages in 2 years: I am not a native English speaker and my English sort of sucked before I got to New York. Then I had to communicate with the Colombian people somehow, so I learned Spanish. Then moved to Berlin and I.. uh, well, sort of made my way though the many wonders of the German language.
  • 18. I soon discovered that Samuel aka Samurai, my little one, was born to become a comic book character. So I started his visual journal.
  • 19. Ok, now, biographical facts are over, let’s change topic: I love to cook but I have no patience to read recipes.
  • 20. I love to read but have no patience to finish most books.
  • 21. I’d love to watch movies in streaming but I have no patience to choose which one to watch.
  • 22. I love coffee but most times I have no patience to finish it. By the time I am at half the cup, I’ve forgotten it somewhere and have already started making a new pot.
  • 23. So yeah, I got no patience.
  • 24. I love drawing. And... surprise: I have the patience to draw. Day after day, night after night, year after year. (Where did I leave that coffee cup again?)
  • 25. By far, I prefer to paint/draw in black and white than in colors. I find colors overwhelmingly beautiful and that makes me fear of using them.
  • 26. I am fascinated with plants. I recently discovered all those cool easy ways to make supermarket veggies sprout in a jar and I’ve been experimenting with potatoes, ginger, spinach and celery. My dream is to have a little garden or a big balcony where I can start my personal jungle.
  • 27. I confess: I am not a big animal lover. This sounds absolutely awful, so please let me explain: I deeply respect the living creature, I am just not dying to snuggle with a cat or to get my face all dog-licked. But I love to draw animals.
  • 28. I like the taste of meat and I am not vegetarian, but I tend to be for long periods of time because I really dislike looking at the meat department in supermarkets, I am completely lost when having to face the choice (what the heck is the difference between a tenderloin and a rib???), and I hate the feeling of passing a knife through raw meat while cooking. So I just never buy any.
  • 29. I’d like to be able to cook fancy vegan food, because vegan dishes are just so yummy, but (as previously stated) I don’t have the patience to follow recipes, so I lost that game from the start.
  • 30. In order to change this bothersome issue of impatience, I decided to find new hobbies. That’s when I bought myself a pair of quad roller skates. I guess the message I am giving myself is ‘be patient or disembowel yourself on coarse asphalt’.
  • 31. I love people. Oh my, oh my all those different faces, haircuts, body shapes, clothing styles! I wanna draw them all, give me people, people, people! That’s probably why taking the subway is almost like a hobby for me.
  • 32. Therefore, I love to draw the human figure. I always did, as far as I remember.
  • 33. I love jelly beans. It’s a quite recent discovery. I am chewing a few (a jar) while thinking about #34.
  • 34. My son would probably love jelly beans as well, but unfortunately they’ll be over by the time he comes back home. He does love gummy bears. I give him gummy bears when he comes to visit me at the farmer’s market where I work baking Crêpes!
  • 35. The whole neighborhood knows me as the Crêpes lady and I am the heroine of all children.
  • 36. I love to tell stories and to listen to stories. I have listened to a lot more stories than I have actually told. One day, I’ll be a cartoonist.
  • 37. I find it hard to define who I am. I am not a cartoonist (not yet, but keep your eyes open), I am not an illustrator (not yet either), I am not a graphic designer (will I ever be one?) and so on and so on.
  • 38. I have no doubt I am a mama, though. A young mama, but a committed one. And a human. A small human, but a committed one. It’s a small world after all.
  • 39. I believe in humans. I believe in good will.
  • 40. I believe in dreams. Life is the most wonderful of all dreams.

Monday, March 16, 2015

The typewriter



***

At age 3, Samurai learned to read and one of his favorite activities is to write freestyle on 
somebody's laptop. For the safety of my own Macbook, I decided to get him an old-fashioned typewriter and, well, you know the rest of the story.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015










***

When this happened, last November, I promised myself that I would have told this story one day. Now the months have passed and that little kid who claimed not to be 'little' has grown up so much, so surprisingly fast. 
The endless motivation he's been showing in his first three years of life, his everyday struggles and the roaring energy with which he faces them, make me strongly believe that inside every single being on our planet, stars have been shining for billions of years.