for LCH

This past week,we finally delivered and set up the Seocheon kindergarten pieces. As usual, Yeonmi did a fantastic job of colorful, creative kid cuteness. The staff was delighted and the kids loved it, sitting on the bench and talking  with the 'sister'.

 

We went to a birthday party on MOnday at the temple where I stayed last year. Buddha's birthday is my favorite Korean holiday for the colorful lanterns which line the roads and temple grounds, and the life of many visitors and the free lunch...
This temple may open a tea room on the premises and we were asked to design and build furniture and decorate the shop. This would mean bringing all the tools and staying there for a few days. It is one of the higher temples in the country at 1400m, and has a road service but most visitors must take the 7km hike/bike trail from the parking lot.

exhibition round up

 

 

Exhibition is doing well. Great response and good traffic.

We sold 6 of 18 pieces on day 2, mostly smaller stuff and under-priced. thanks for the shout out from the Hub and the gallery has a page with some objets images and Yeonmi's text.

morning country bike ride scenes

 

 

 

From the exhibition statement

The exhibition work was installed yesterday and open to view today. Looks great, a lovely large space. The quarter is busy with tourists and so lovely with the blossoms and energy of spring, with the heat of summer.

Andrew David Henderson

Carpenter, Photographer, Painter, Naturalist

 

My chief concerns throughout the course of my work have been humankind's relationship with nature, and the individual's relationship with society. Much of those investigations were portrayed by the juxtaposition of geometry (logic, civil rule, urbanity) with organic form (nature, freedom, individual expression).


My interest in the environment, geography and civilization keep me pursuing international travel which led me to Korea, and my creative partnership with Kim Yeon-mi has kept me here for seven years.


Woodworking and construction have always been a great part of my creative output. I first started using reclaimed lumber in Winnipeg in 1995, and found aged wood to have great character in terms of color and texture, and its own story due to its previous entities. Preserving forests is of great importance to the futures of all living things, much as sturdy and long-lasting construction is important in giving new identities to old used wood. This way, we can reduce waste, pollution and degradation of nature. 


The current woodworks exhibited here continue in the same vein as my earlier art works. Woodworking is very much a relationship between the organic and geometric: the tree's natural shape is rendered to straight edges to facilitate the use of modern cutting tools. With Hanok, I admire the keeping of organic natural shapes. In this show of work we've tried to keep some of the beauty of the natural form while compromising with geometric construction methods.

 

앤디내 꽃

 

Hanok Upcycled Exhibition

http://map.naver.com/local/siteview.nhn?code=12037013

Our exhibition opens May 1 , 6 pm at Gyo Dong Art Center. Link and map to gallery shown above. Runs until Sunday May 6. Please join us.

This show is shared with our friend, Korean landscape painter Kim, Jeong-ju.

We are showing a dozen pieces featuring local Korean timber, and mostly recycled antique wood reclaimed from hanok houses. This is a chance to show uncommon designs and not everyday type of works.

 The above cabinet is a reformed oriental Medicine apothecary . We cut the bottom two rows of a reclaimed cabinet. We basically only kept the skeleton and made new drawers ( 40 of them ) , added recycled fir to the top, back and sides, and  put on the mosaic of drawer faces. Some of the drawer faces are fake, actually attached to the cabinet. It measures 150 x 100 x 40 cm, and is very heavy.  This is one of the featured pieces for our upcoming exhibition opening May 1.

Africa kids clothing shop got its sign last week. Once again , we offer complete services for interior design , saving the client  time and money. Yeonmi is always delighted when we finish off something so well and the customer is ecstatic. The name , we found odd, so after inquiry she told us she will donate  a portion of her earnings to African charities.

 

Le Marais Spring collection

 

This is the first of three current big jobs, completed last week. The customer is opening a kids clothing shop and wanted the loft and stairs as a play place and for a unique change of environment from other shops.

I made the posts, floor frame, stairs , two rails , counter at the shop and loaded the truck up and installed it all in one afternoon. This client is a pretty fun and cool young lady and was so delighted with the rapid transformation, and proud of her interior- having a shop has been her' lifelong dream'. So she wants us to do a sign as well before opening in a couple weeks. The day after the install, the client came to the shop with a gift for me- a new pair of hiking shoes. She and her mate had noticed that my old Merrill's were getting pretty ragged, so they went to the brand shop ( pretty recent arrival to Korea) and set me up with new boots in a perfect fit.

This gift giving is a perk of having our shop. We regularly get bakery/baked goods, coffees, pizza/meals, clothes as gift of thanks and appreciation by customers present and past( our fan club members as I call them). I seldom have to step out to the mart for tea time snacks as there are almost daily edible treats.

Otherwise, there is no other wise. No other news. Its work , work , work. The major customers are on hold and new clients are being put off for at least 4 weeks- if ever; word is getting around that we are trying to close. But yet no closing date.

The big news about work is that we are having an exhibition of special and rare and untypical designs coming up May 1. We are sharing a large and well known private gallery space with a painter friend. There is much room for our large works. Most of our work is Hanok Upcycled, using reclaimed timbers from traditional post and beam construction. The show is during JIFF week and in Jeonju's touristy Hanok village, so exposure will be great. Announcement and images to be posted here soon.

rescue mission

One of our repeat customers, asked us to redeem this woodwork made by her recently deceased father-in-law. Keeping it to honor him, but having us reform it to improve aesthetic sensibilities, she was delighted with the outcome. The wood was very soft local deciduous, so easy to work, the lid is Douglas fir which I had in stock.

making Jeonju more artsy, one kindergarten at a time

 

new tables

The two right tables are made from Japanese cedar ( hanoki), while the left pictured is China Mohogany ( toona sinensis)whose timber was harvested in our village quite a while back.

newsish

The stress is mounting, but the spring weather will soon curb those spirits.

No action with the house of late, no time to do any work on it or invest time or energy.

At Le Marais, we had a couple promising deals go south on us. We're still hopeful that the last one may return and ink a deal. If so , as negotiated on Saturday, we would exit the lease on May 10, a few days after the closing of our upcoming joint exhibition.

The shop is a good deal for potential tenants ( we gave up on selling the business ages ago- just trying to exit the lease now and have a super sale), excellent location and visibility, high traffic and of course lovely interiors. The best part is that there's an extra 1000 square feet of workshop space included with the rent, so any shop needing storage or production area is getting a heck of a deal. We know a new tenant will be found, just want it sooner than later, and this is the season for change.

Meanwhile, business is hot. We have to prepare for the said exhibition, but got some 20k in contracts today: a kids clothes shop, a cafe and a big kindergarten...all commercial projects. Only one will require a days onsite building, the rest are fabricated , delivered and installed.

If the lease contract happens , we have limited time for all the manufacturing but do have an end in sight. As soon as a tenant signs , a major clearance sale starts.

Emotional roller coaster, it is.

With all the insane work ahead, Yeonmi is dreaming of epic travels as a recompense and escape. From Japan to Indonesia and Thailand , Mongolia to Nepal to Europe , there may very well be some globetrotting ahead.

The exhibition is in a big space in the touristy Hanok village of Jeonju at the same week as the great JIFF ( international film festival). We partnered up with a painter who will show on the walls and we have the rest of the floor for awesome objets. We will use this chance to make big eclectic works with slabs, whimsical statues, mega tables and generally use up and upcycle as much of the antique woods and peculiar lumber we've been hoarding for the past couple years.

Stay tuned for more.

In the meantime, the early morning sun will help me get busy earlier and sooner, and I don't foresee any social events or rest whatsoever throughout April.

The irony is that small business are in major dire straits in Korea. From Yeonmi's news source, she tells me of a survey of shopkeepers. Korea is still the land of small business- and I've always wondered how they survive. Well, they don't . So many little shops, people actually live in them, like restaurants where they daily stack all the tables and lay down their bedrolls- you eat your lunch in their bedroom.
Yeonmi reports from the poll: half of respondents ( shopkeepers) claim to be middle class income, half , in poverty; these days 90% of them report slow business; 51% only breaking even and a mere 7.6 percent are turning any profit. They all claim that their greatest problem is too much competition i.e. so many of same kind of shops in same area. Only 5% say they have their market cornered so to speak.
Ya think!? People here have no business sense whatsoever. All the shops are exactly the same as each other, same products , same appearance. My buddy's cafe has 16 others as competitors in an area less than 1 square km! The new part of town I suspect is more dense, denser than the shopkeepers opening up there. This new dong has blossomed, mushroomed in the past 2-3 years , every month we drive by and new cafes and clothes shops are open everywhere. Now, finally, they are going bankrupt everywhere. Who's profiting? Suppliers, interior remodellers, designers and coffee growers/importers. Yes big box stores are to blame ,too, but the shopkeeprs aren't allying themselves and they are holding on to a business model and philosophy long outdated. AAhh Korea, a nation of constant change ( and sorrow).

 

 

new stuff

 It's my spring-buck-planter.

The used wood and various scraps doors are really popular these days. I'm glad that some 70% of our orders are reclaimed materials, although we do have to pay a lot for those. The console ( drawers) in the top right is particularly good work . It is all Douglas fir with linseed oil, and the drawer faces are chinaberry. Selecting the right lengths, choosing which weathered parts have nice grain, cutting away the shrunken knots and nail holes takes quite a bit more prep than using fresh milled lumber.

The final two steps in preparing the visa application were completed yesterday. it was not easy for such simple matters. First , a bank draft from the foreign exchange bamk. As usually happens to me, the teller has no idea how to proceed ( obviously the range of daily transactions is limited in Korea) required - and has to consult with( this time) three other workers. 25' later, for which I hadn't queued, I had my draft.

After a final revision at the shop , I went to the district big post office sorting center. It's quite a lovely large new building, maybe the biggest in the province now, where the staff was refusing to send my big envelope to CIC's box number address. Guess how many workers it took before they accepted my request? EIGHT bloody people. The two clerks, got a better English speaking clerk which in turn brought 4 different senior staff from elsewhere in the building, and I talked to someone by phone at some other HQ. I had to reinforce that BOX3000 at Station A is not some lonely receptacle on the frontiers of humanity, an icy bin on the snowy tundra shadowed by hungry polar bears. Station A means the biggest post office in Eastern Canada, likely dwarfing their provincial minded operation , serving ten times the volume of mail, and surely any one of the hundreds of overpaid staff there would be able to sign for the arrival of the package. They were worried that because it was a box# no one could sign for the delivery and insure/guarantee the service.

And with that, the visa app was out of my hands, now just a new anxiety.

As you can see, I'm at the peak of one of my regular get-me-the-hell-out-of-here phases. I'm trying to remain positive while complaining, this time just blaming all my frustrations on the Jeolla factor: the famous Korean provincial prejudice which stereotypes this region's character as backwards, lazy, atavistic, dim and distinctively classless.

The rest of our news is no news. We had sincere inquiries and possibly deals and offers on both the house and shop, but all fall through, just creating an emotional roller-coaster. We're dropping asking prices for sure, calling realtors again who sympathize with our frustration adding how slow the market is for everyone.

Despite its optimistic title, this article outlines the current state. Here, WSJ's aged article explains the slump. And for further explanation , see this essay.

SO we ( try to) patiently wait.