Identity Project FINAL - BK

This piece is called Morning Glory by Becca Kang. I went with a deconstructive approach using Photoshop. I had trouble with this project due to background choices but I finally got it down to a specific concept I wanted to portray.
The morning glory flower is the Korean national flower. On my trips to Korea, I remember seeing at least one every time I have gone. It holds no serious connection to me as a person but I wanted to create a metaphor for a morning glory to my experiences with my relatives. Family is very important to me as well as in Korean culture. There's a level of respect and honor that's immediately expected if you are family and especially by age. Although I haven't spent much time with any of my family outside of my immediate family, I still love and respect them solely because they are my family. To me, blood is thicker than water. And it always was so sad for me, to know that I would never really be close to my numerous cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents in Korea - mainly because of distance, partially because of language. Because of the distance and infrequent visits, I hold the memories I've had with each relative dear. Just like the morning glory which blossoms in the morning and simply dies by the afternoon, my memories of my family are short-lived and fleeting. But each memory is much more appreciated and each detail is remembered. Ironically, it makes them more precious.
To indicate the "memory" state of my piece, I painted a watercolor morning glory based on a picture I took on my last trip to Korea. Then, I scanned the image into the computer and cropped pieces of the flower and reconstructed them back together to create a more jagged, deconstructive flower. I added layers and layers of the flower upon each other, playing with filters and opacity. I chose to present them this way in order to show the somewhat unstable state of my memories. Then I wrote the places in which my family members live, some in Korea and some in America -- but I wrote them all in Korean. I created a opaque background of these characters and related them to the relatives that live there. In order to give respect to my relatives, I didn't call them by personal names but by the Korean name for "grandmother, aunt, uncle, etc". These names reflect a level of respect. I, then, highlighted the city names and repeated them around the composition randomly. However, I wrote "Korea" and "America" in Korean and centered them to create the tension and tie between these two places in which my family resides. On the right hand corner, I created a poem that reflects the short-lived, glorious moments of the morning glory as well as the memories I have. I wanted it to fade into the background and be somewhat hard to read so that the viewer would have to look closely.
These small moments in my life make me who I am. Although more significant things have happened to me before and have changed me, I feel as though I'll always be someone who appreciates the small things and moments. I'll always be someone who takes care of her family and strives to be closer with each member. This is a longing I've always had and it defines me.