Susan's Visit to Korea

It's almost a month since we returned from a short trip to Korea where I took part in the Seongnam International Book Art Fair. I was very inspired by the experience but have not had time to write or create much about it. I did compose a short letter with photos to preschool children at the Cambridge-Ellis School in Cambridge, MA where I spent a few days last month. Here's a slightly modified version.

R ur kids 4getn how 2 rite?: Fun writing activities for summer

Newburyport writer Aine Greaney has written an article full of great ideas for getting kids writing over the summer. She kindly lists makingbooks.com as a resource. You can read the article here.

You can learn more about Aine and her work on her website.

Korean Counting Book

http://www.makingbooks.com/step.shtml

My husband and I went to Korea last month where I was part of the Seungnam International Book Art Fair. I exhibited some of the Spirit Books and gave a coupleof workshops to children. We were welcomed with wonderful hospitality and had a chance to make friends from Korea and around the world. Our trip was only six days with two of them in airports and in the air so it took us a while to recover after our return home. I'll be posting information about the trip sometime soon. I always like to show some sample ways of using the books I make in workshops. Here's a book that I took to Korea. The first page says counting book followed by the numbers from one to nine.

I used five sheets of 4.25" x 11" colored copy paper (standard size sheets cut in half vertically). The step book works great for a counting book as the page revealed after lifting each step gets larger as you move along the book. For a variation, you can bind it using the stick and elastic technique instead of yarn.
http://www.makingbooks.com/elastic.shtml


Links

Numbers in Different Languages
A counting book can be an entry into a different culture. I'm planning on making a larger counting book with the following:

1 palace (we visited Gyeongbokgung (Gyeongbok Palace),
2 chopsticks (Korean chopsticks are made of stainless steel),
3 azalea blossoms (I was introduced to one of Korea's most famous poems by its translator David R. McCann who is the brother of a friend from the Children's Museum),
4 handmade brushes (I bought a beautiful one in a shop in Insadong in Seoul),
5 birds (as far as I can tell the common birds we saw and loved were black-billed magpies),
6 children playing badminton (we saw lots in the park on the weekend),
7 bowls of kimchi (the fermented cabbage dish is served at every meal),
8 pairs of slippers (there were slippers in the hotel room, outside the dining room in a restaurant, and in bins at the airport where we had to take off our shoes),
9 Dunkin Donuts coffees (we were surprised to see containers of Dunkin Donuts coffee arrive at the exhibition hall especially when we have friends in the western US who miss them terribly)

Wikipedia has well organized sets of numbers from one to ten in different languages.

Korean Numbers

There are two kinds of numbers in Korean: pure Korean numbers and Sino-Korean numbers. The numbers in the Counting Book above are Sino-Korean numbers.

Sino-Korean Numbers

Pronunciation:
1= il
2= ee
3= sam
4= sa
5= oh
6= yook
7= chil
8= pal
9= goo
10= ship

You can hear them and then test yourself with a concentration game here.

Korean Number Song
You may find this cute or irritating but it does go through the Korean numbers from one to ten.

Adapted from the May 2007 issue of Making Books Monthly
Free subscriptions available at makingbooks.com

Translations Trials

There seems to be a convergence of Translations installations and extreme weather.The first last June was challenged by a week of newsworthy rain. The current installation at Sasaki Associates experienced the effects of a newsworthy
northeaster. When I woke one morning at 4 o'clock to the sound of whipping wind and pelting rain, my first thought was of the trees at Sasaki. Later that morning the email came.

We left shortly after for a trip to Korea (more about that later) and finally got to Sasaki on April 27th to assess the damage and make repairs. My husband Charlie was all for leaving it as is and accepting its current state as the work of nature. I didn't mind it showing the effects of nature but had gentle erosion rather than brutal destruction in mind. I also felt that the destruction was the result of a design flaw on my part not just nature's work. The paper and ink were fine. The problems occurred where the cord that attached the banners to the trees ran through.


We decided to repair some but not all. One of the trees had partially fallen banners that hung down beautifully and I rather liked the sound of the paper rustling in the breeze. We left them as they were. On another tree, the fallen pieces were a twisted mess. These we repaired as we did those on several other trees. Some of the banner pieces had completely fallen off and many of those we brought home. I was pleased with the end result and hope our current mild weather continues until the exhibit ends on June 4.

I am going to continue to experiment. My new plan is to sew the paper to cloth and run the cord through the cloth rather than the paper. I'm going to make a sample and test it on a tree over the summer. I feel fortunate that one of the characteristics I bring to my work is a willingness to keep working at a problem until I solve it. I think it brings up the merit of taking pleasure in the process. If there is enjoyment in the making, it is easy to keep repeating it until works.