Yes, storytelling and narrating are some of the main themes of my work. Since I graduated from college in 1982, I have consistently worked in watercolor and collage medium. While watercolor is a very fluid, slow and intimate process by nature, collage enables me to juxtapose instantly texts, words, materials and even small objects. I choose materials such as old letters, notes and photographs and rejuvenate them in my work. This memorabilia then takes me on a sentimental journey that inspires me to paint with mood, chance, colors and glue. By incorporating all these materials together I am able to narrate stories or personal, sensitive subject matters that I find dear. Thus, a colleague once referred to me as an artist who paints as if writing poetry. Of course, I also create watercolor collages that are non-objective and do not have any meaning or message. I use words and sentences, for instance, from scraps of newspapers for an immediate composition. They are there solely for visual and compositional reasons and are generally quite abstract in nature. Sometimes, sentiments are not describable with words but are more easily portrayed with colors, shapes and patterns.

How did the idea for your pieces for Finding Family Stories begin?

I am creating nearly all new works for this exhibition. However, the new medium that I will incorporate with Finding Family Stories as the main theme is the art of bookmaking. Finding Family Stories has given me the inspiration to tell a story using visual images as well as text and I have decided to make a small book about my family. I will prepare and fold pages, bind and maybe sew each page by hand rather than use materials bought from the store. The book will be a narrative, exploring the history of my immediate family—my mother, my father and myself. I will combine my watercolor collage and drawing technique with my family photographs, some old letters and notes which I have selected specifically for this particular storytelling. Instead of a two-dimensional painting that is confined behind a glass frame I will create an unique art piece which is more three-dimensional, more intimate, immediate and accessible to viewers. That is very different from what I have ever done before. It is quite exciting.

By choosing to portray your family stories in your work, you bring something private to the public. What do you hope to achieve?

The question of degree of disclosure is always in the back of my mind. There is a lot of abstract contemporary art which has "Untitled" as its title. Though I resort to that title time to time, I believe "Untitled" is a very unfriendly and socially irresponsible title. Most of my pieces are very theme-, location- and time-specific and carry titles that invite the audience to view, feel and be there with me. In that sense, I am a subjective painter and I cannot therefore be a shy or a private one. For instance, speaking of my work which incorporates stories, I have done a small piece entitled "Oh, Daddy..." which contains a portion of a letter which my father wrote to me while I was in college away from home. In this letter he wrote, "Please call me once in a while, as I am getting older now (he was then 74) and even hearing your voice time to time is a great pleasure for me. . . ." When I received this letter from my dad, I felt an intense love for him as well as an appreciation for his honesty in expressing his feelings and vulnerability and I could not throw this letter away. By making something pretty out of it some ten years later, I felt an extreme satisfaction filled with nostalgic sentiment. Narrating personal and family stories for me is therapeutic in that it enables me to commemorate and reflect on the special relationship I had with my father who is now deceased.

Now, to share the private side of me with the public is another question. Having an Englishman as a husband, I have learned to respect one's privacy and I feel that everyone is entitled to his or her own private space and time which, in a way, makes things more interesting, attractive and mysterious. For me, my painting time in the studio serves as my private arena. A part of me does not necessarily want to share all with the public, yet part of me does; there is always a push and pull. What I find pleasurable is, after struggling through as well as enjoying the challenging process of painting, someone else may look at my completed work and appreciate what I have tried to convey as a message or a narrative. Perhaps it reminds them of their own special relationship with somebody who might be dear to them or it may remind them of a very special place or time. So as long as the viewers have some kind of reaction, I think I have served my purpose which is what most visual artists strive for—an image that triggers something in the viewer's mind. I don't mind if they don't understand each and all of the diarist narrative or at times abstract portions of my work. My attempt to communicate stops when my work triggers a feeling in the viewers, then the rest that happens in the viewers' mind is entirely theirs, as the process of my painting and the catharsis that comes with it is entirely mine.

Julie Sim-Edwards was born in Seoul, Korea, and came to Los Angeles in 1973. She received her B.A. with honors in Studio Arts from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her watercolor collages are a spontaneous process of play: color, cut and paste, diaristic and narrative in nature, abstract and intimate in presentation. For the past five years, she has been curating shows that promote and encourage young and emerging artists. She has recently curated "Collaborations", a group exhibition of Korean-American and African-American artists commemorating the anniversary of the LA Riots.