Issue 45: KP... as American as Apple Pie!

Happy 1st Birthday, KP! 2025 is OUR year!

Helloooo KP!

I hope 2025 is treating you well so far! I love starting the new year with a birthday. Komerican Pie is one year old, yay! As I reflect on all that transpired last year, I am so grateful to be working on this webzine and experiencing a lift in collective human spirit. Thank you so much for your personal messages and enthusiasm last year along with helping to build a great community! We can’t wait for you to see our new features and hear from Emeline and Mira joining us - learn more in Issue 42! Also, we fine-tuned our values, updated our website and started making new things for you to enjoy at home. Lifestyle paper products and tangible fun coming to you this spring… all made with heART!

Sweet & Salty: KP… as American as Apple Pie!

Image Credit: Hauser & Wirth.

Amy Sherald, As American as apple pie, 2020. Oil on canvas. 123 x 101 x 2 1/2 in.

My friend came over for a visit a few weeks ago and introduced me to this piece of art by Amy Sherald. After nearly a year of working on Komerican Pie, I jumped at the title of it — “As American as apple pie.” This colloquial American idiom, along with my desire to remove the hyphen between Korean and American – inspired the name of our weekly webzine, Komerican Pie.

Many of us already know the work of this prolific artist – most renowned for painting Michelle Obama’s official White House portrait and works celebrating the Black experience. By using the grisaille (gray) tone for skin, Sherald challenges long-held notions of race and representation in the U.S. She “foregrounds the idea that Black life and identity are not solely tethered to grappling publicly with social issues, and that resistance lies equally in a full interior life and an expansive vision of selfhood in the world.”

YES! As Sherald and so many artists have already proclaimed for their communities — we need to see ourselves, please ourselves and revel in the full experience of our humanity… which includes the good life! While it’s important to address our wounds and histories, it’s just as important to heal them and live without apology. Without fragility.

Don’t we owe it to our ancestors to live a little and make their toils worthwhile? Did they really endure colonization, enslavement, war, migration and insane work ethic for us to sit in half-humanity? Can we simultaneously heal our bodies, minds and collective spirit while feeling good, too? YES! So with this amazing inspiration from Amy Sherald, let’s kick off the new year with some big 돌잔치 (doljanchi) energy on KP’s first birthday!

Crispy Crust: Original art and poetry from an unhypenated life.

Like poetry, I find watercolor to be one of the most emotionally expressive mediums. I process, release and find inspiration painting abstract watercolors on small pieces of paper or in my journal. Today I’m sharing a more literal piece - a young girl’s 한복 (hanbok).

I made this a few months ago while meditating on my desire to be more compassionate towards myself and my history. Letting go of faulty beliefs and defense mechanisms I built up as a child has been a major exercise over the years. Will it ever end?! :) I’m okay if it doesn’t, because I have found I can live in the full spectrum of human experience better when I stay connected to the girl inside. We ride the roller coaster of life together - getting through the ups and downs, twists and turns with all the energy and emotion to meet it.

This piece also reminds me of a 한복 a young toddler might wear at her 돌 (dol) — so it’s the perfect fit to mark Komerican Pie’s first birthday!