Korean-born artist, Youngmin Lee (based in the United States), celebrates her cultural heritage through her work with traditional Korean techniques, fibers, and dyes. Lee makes jogakbo—a style of patchwork used to create bojagi which is a textile made from scraps and used for wrapping gifts and other objects. Jogakbo is about creating an object that is both beautiful and useful. Lee describes her process as meditative, imbuing the textiles with happiness and well wishes.
For Dawn, Lee used hanji bidan, a woven textile for which the warp is a very fine silk, and the weft is Korean mulberry paper called hanji. She employed a ssamsol technique, creating a seam that interlocks the raw edges of two fabrics.
Lee studied with Master Jung Kwan-Chae, who teaches traditional Korean indigo dyeing at his workshop, designated by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage site in 2001. Master Jung uses onggi, large earthenware jars, to create niram (Korean indigo paste) and as the indigo dye vat. A key element to Korean indigo is the ashes of oyster shells (calcium oxide). Master Jung burns these himself and mixes them into a paste for use after the initial fermentation of the leaves.