Rebecka: How would you describe your work to someone who has never seen it?

Izzy Cho: I guess the elevator pitch that I usually give is that my work is about physical manifestations of good luck in my Korean-American background with a focus on good luck charms and rituals. So it's kind of looking at old school good luck charms and antiquity and doing goofy things to them, like blowing them up really big, or altering the shape a little bit, applying a lot of fluorescent colors and getting really playful with it. And also thinking about alternative materials, so if you use a binding knotting cord for a traditional charm but you make it big, what do you do with that? So maybe we have to use backpack straps to make it a bit more practical and kind of have that translate. Making it really fun, making it really playful and that would be the package of it.

 R: Who/or what are some of the influences that helped you evolve the visual language for your work?

IC: Yeah, so, there's this whole antiquity research, or just looking at Korean antiquity books that my mom had from like the 80s that she gave me. But I also very casually look at fashion. Just the way that it's so effortlessly innovative because it's a part of their job to mix patterns and textures and layer that on top of each other. And then the way you accessorize, too, I almost see that as a flat shape on top of like a field of pattern. So I kind of look at that to see how I can tweak a little bit of form and color or just change the angle of that or change the transparency of that. It's really quite beautiful and really simple. 

And then one big influence that I don't think will ever go away is that I  was a studio assistant in my undergrad for Charlene Liu, the head current professor and printmaking coordinator at the University of Oregon. She very generously let me be a studio assistant, even though I was kind of like, too green, and probably, kind of fucked up more than I, well [laughs] she dealt with a lot of my amateur printmaking skills. But working with her really informs how I think about composition, gravity, form, and even, concept. She was nice enough to let me brainstorm with her, just because the way we deal with like identity in our work was kind of similar. At the time, I was very anal about concept like, “Oh, everything has to move like this, and blah, blah, blah.” But she was very interested in multiple metaphors. Like, this circle, it could be the sun, but it also could be, like, a tangerine, but it also could be the yolk inside of a mooncake or something. Creating this landscape of ideas that still all talk about the same thing in a way. Still talk about culture, identity and abundance and whatnot. So I think that really informs how I work and how I think about shapes and meaning and abstraction a lot. And she uses a lot of cute gradients and I like cute colors.

R: No, I can really see the, what would you say? The lineage, of her ideas into your work. It's super cool to see that.

IC: I do not have a single original idea. Every time I come up with an idea that I think is my own, I'm like, oh no, she already did that [laughs]. She mentioned it to me like a long time ago.

R: You recently did an installation at Comfort Station for their SCAFFOLD project and I I really love that structure, because I think it's so interesting how people have to adjust their ideas to what is a very set space, and so I was curious if you could talk a little bit about creating this work. Is it the first time you make art for a public space?

IC: Yeah so I was just fascinated by how the scaffold was itself kind of a fake house. It was an idea of a house. And previously I’d worked a little bit with Pungsu-Jiri which is like a form of geomancy. Another popular example, is feng shui, but this is a Korean version of it. So I used to work with that in the digital space because I thought it was very funny how it's like, real rules of like trying to make intangible tangible. So trying to make things like good luck and bad luck tangible with organization and rules. So it's like, “oh, if you put a plant here, that's good luck. But if you put a plant here, it's bad luck.” So again, the idea of physical manifestation. And I thought there was a parallel between the scaffold structure (the "idea of home") with the made up constructs of  Pungsu-Jiri, this idea of homemaking.  It made sense, homemaking in this fake house.

I still wanted to still work with charms, but I changed the shape and that was informed by auspicious objects in the home. So, I put in mirror shapes or like the idea of mirrors because placement of mirrors is kind of important. I made vases, I kept the flower shapes because also placement of flowers and flower symbology is a thing as well. The moon as well because thinking about directionality is very important, Pungsu-Jiri is very informed by North, East, South, West. And where I placed the charms too, it was like, North, East, South, West. And also, bats as well. Weirdly, I feel like this doesn't come up a lot, but if you, if you go to Korea, or if you look at a lot of cultural objects bats are actually a pretty prominent motif. I feel like it's not part of the mainstream, maybe because they're not, as cute as a bunny or marketable as a tiger. Incorporating that as well. So, auspicious domestic iconography was involved. It was my first time doing a public art project like that in the elements. Which really kicked my ass [laughs].


R: Especially in Chicago, I bet. 

IC: I was short on time and I was still determined to use cardboard so I tried to do a bunch of things, like caulking as well as spraying it with an acrylic varnish. But it did fall apart. It was supposed to stay up for four weeks, but it stayed up for like two weeks. But I still learned a lot of technical things, which I was really stoked about. Because I feel like I haven't been able to like flex technical learning. And then with the poetry, I personally want to get back into reading. I want to learn how to read again. And so, on my Instagram stories, which I rarely use, I did like a “help me”  asking for references on Asian or Asian American poets that worked a lot with nature and home. I got a lot of responses and then I looked up every single one of them and looked at the poetry to see if it would fit the vibe. I eventually narrowed it down to works by Chen Chen, Li-Young Lee, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Rabindranath Tagore, and John Yau. I wanted something that was general enough but also, like, specific. I didn't want anything that would point too much towards a very specific, Asian or South East Asian culture. Something that could be, like Pan-Asian influenced because I just wanted to talk about home in a broader sense.

I was thinking about how practicing Pungsu-Jiri (and other forms of geomancy) was a way to organize/orient self in space and place, which I felt parallels diaspora folks trying to make space/place for themselves in their respective environments. Although I did feel conflicted about that because I feel like I was drawing a lot from Korean influences, so maybe I should have tried sticking to korean poets. But, I don't know, there is just some really beautiful content. I was trying to find the gage, the balance of something that feels specific, personal and relatable, but also broad enough that it could be applicable in a lot of different ways. And the found text also informed my shapes and placements. I think in my work I'm always interested in micro-macro, like things that are visible from far away and things that will invite people to look a little bit closer. And so I think that text was a way for people to engage a little bit closer and then with the shapes themselves and how the flat the colors were I think, you know, people who were driving in a car, people who were walking across the sidewalk were able to see it and enjoy it in that way as well.


R: Well, I love how you really have to go close to sort of to get that intimate reading. What’s your approach to art making? Where do you find motivation and inspiration?

IC: It's like there's literally nothing else I could do. I feel like there's nothing else that I'm good at ever since I was like young and in school. I wasn't bad at school, but I don't think I was ever really smart. And the first time I actually engaged with critical thinking and understood what that was was through art making. For me, I learned as much about, like, the world, and about, empathy, and consequences, and actually reacting to them through art. So I think the only way I can learn to perceive the world to this day is, through art making. So my motivation is that there's nothing else I could really do. And inspiration, I don't know. I think I'm trying to be just really playful and like, I kind of have this philosophy of if I don't think it's fun, then I probably won't make it.

R: Yeah. That's a good one, honestly. I feel like we force ourselves to do so much, so many things that we don't necessarily enjoy already.

IC: Yeah. That's how I'm trying to make it work. Even with the poetry thing, you know, that's not strictly just for my practice. Personally, I’m just like going to the library for the first time in months. But it's like, I want to read some poetry, I personally want to get some more Asian American content. So it's like, how do I implement that into my work.

R: Your work requires laborious making by hand and takes form across a process of printmaking, sculpture and installation. What kind of atmosphere do you like to work in? Do you listen to anything?

IC: I wish I could work in silence [laughs]. Like, just silence and tuning into my art. But honestly, I think ever since the pandemic mental health took like a pretty bad hit so I feel like I do need some chatter around to get in the zone. I listen to a lot of Mario Kart music, a lot of video game music. It's designed to help you focus and it's designed to, I don't know, make you competitive or like get you into the zone. So that's been super helpful. And I do listen to a few podcasts, no more murder, none of that, that's bad [laughs]. But let's see…Some D&D podcasts to confess. And also a movie podcast. I've been listening to one called Horror Queers. I do like that one a lot because I love films, I love movies. They inform my work I feel, very occasionally. But, I'm very scared [laughs]. So, in this podcast, they focus on a movie, they give production history, a whole summary and they give their own commentary throughout. But their angle is that they either watch queer horror films, or horror films through a queer lens. Like, “oh, this, you know, this is kind of gay” or “this is how I felt as a gay person like watching this.” It's super fun.

R: Is there something in your pieces that is just for you, that you’re pretty sure no one would get?

IC: Hmm I don’t know. I do like that question a lot, though. I feel like maybe every artist should have, should practice this, like, just a little secret for themselves…yeah think it would not be as much like conceptual, but maybe like placement of a thing, like a secret little charm or icon on the piece that maybe I would show to my close friends or something. But my work is always about my mom one way or another. That used to be a bit more explicit in my earlier works, but I think now I don't talk about her quite literally as much on purpose, you know. But I think in that sort of way whenever I talk about ritual or charm or this thing I saw or this thing sensation. It really is through the filtered lens of my mother. So in a way, maybe my little secret weapon is my mom and how she has been the conduit to how I see culture and identity.

R: Could you talk about the idea of “DIY Luck”?

IC: Yeah. I'm always like, oh, it's so funny. I don't know if it's actually that funny, but I thought it's just funny that I'm literally making these charms in a kind of stubborn way, like I'll do it myself. Like, I'm just going to produce my own luck and magic as if that is how it works. Which I thought was silly initially, trying to manifest good luck and almost brute forcing it. But actually, that's how people work, people keep around talismans or do certain ritual performances in order to give you good energy for the day or help you out with a certain problem. But I guess DIY Luck also is also the added cherry on top or the last move you can make, the last embellish on your life. Cause we're all doing our best living. We're going to our job, we're trying to nurture money, we're trying to nurture relationships.