Hi, I'm new here...
My name is Diana Nicholette Jeon. I’m thrilled to have recently joined ONE TWELVE as an editor/curator.
A bit about me…
Since 1995, I’ve lived, worked and studied in Honolulu, HI. I’m a mom to a 20-year-old son. I probably hold the planetary record for spending the most years possible in pursuit of a BA degree in Art. I have an MFA in Imaging and Digital Art from the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. (Yes, I actually dragged my husband and son from HI to MD and back to get that darn degree.) I taught digital and traditional printmaking during my grad program and digital imaging and motion graphics/video in a New Media program at a community college here in Honolulu from 2007-13. After that, I left teaching to pursue my art full time. It’s been trying, fun, personally fulfilling and eventful, sometimes all of those at once!
My own art comes from my life...my personal experiences and my outlook on socio-political matters. I was greatly influenced as an undergrad by the work of Ann Hamilton, so process always seems to play a large part in everything I create. I had a huge “aha” moment when Enrique Martinez Celaya gave a visiting artist talk at the University of Hawai’i during my undergrad program. His mixed media work is quite material-based; that led me down the path of imbuing mana (meaning) to the materials I use. So while some people might look at my work and think that it seems like it was created by several different people…I think of it as using whatever process and materials needed to make the statement I want to make for any given series. Also, I do feel there is something that is indefinably me that threads through all my work as well.
The Cloud And The Hope, from the series Nights As Inexorable As The Sea
#2 from the I, Orfeo series
Resistance Girl, from the Self-Exposure series
As to my taste in the work of others, I tend to love work that pushes boundaries, work that mixes media, work that has a definitive individual statement and point of view. Some personal favorites of mine, all shown below, are Diane Fenster’s photo-installation Secrets of the Magdalena Laundries; Smith Eliot’s Tintype work; Jennifer Georgescu’s Mother Series; Ervin A. Johnson’s project In Honor; J. Frederic May’s portfolio Author’s Hallucination; Chris Peregoy’s Pathological Content series.
Diane Fenster, Secrets of the Magdalena Laundries; installation using 20x24 polaroid transfers on bedsheets with original sound score by Michael McNabb (image via the artist’s website.)
Smith Eliot, Masks, from the portfolio Tintypes (image via artist’s website)
Jennifer Georgescu, from Mother Series (image via the artist’s Facebook page)
Ervin A. Johnson, from In Honor (image via the artist’s website)
J. Frederic May, Author’s Halluciation #83, “Val” (image via the artist’s website)
Chris Peregoy, Bicycle Pals, from the Pathological Content series (image via the artist’s website)
I guess I had a lot to say here! Hopefully I have left you with a sense of who I am and what you might expect to see from me in the near future.