Hanji Happenings

The Melbourne Korea Week Festival for 2016 has now come and gone.   Life has been pretty hectic since I was contacted about 3 weeks ago by the Korean Consular General's Dept. in Melbourne  and asked if I'd be interested in exhibiting some of my work and if I so wished,  selling some pieces. I was taken aback at first but thought, what a great opportunity to get more known about Hanji and to introduce the fact that this Australian lady loves doing a traditional Korean craft.  I didn't have many small pieces left in my studio so I worked really hard over the ensuing weeks to get everything done in the time frame I'd been given, and at the same time, making sure I had pieces that would travel well as I had to carry everything in my personal luggage on the plane trips over and back. I photographed everything, packed them up very carefully and I, along with Ron my trusty husband and helper, headed for Melbourne on a 6 am flight last Friday, with o...

This week I've tried to maximize my time and instead of cutting Hanji items out of cardboard by hand, I decided to piece together some of the kits I've collected over the years. Many of these kits are more than 10 years old and have been with me since I left Korea and during my travels to different countries around the world. These days I usually cut out my own items using a thick cardboard and a very sharp craft knife using one of the patterns I've drawn up.  The beauty of this is that because of a lot of trial and correction over the years I now know that everything fits nicely. There's always the odd occasion when lines aren't cut as precisely as they should be and small tweaks need to be made, but they're usually very easily correctable. What I've found is that I can't assume that the kits are going to be better and quicker as well as producing a more precise article. You would expect that this would be the case with machinery doi...