REALTIART

  Not long ago, I went to see the artist Jung Inhee in Yangpyeong with my sister and brother-in-law. The place was a rural village almost as pretty as her, and the Marigold we bought at a botanical garden cafe on the way was just about as lovely as her. The poet, (her husband) came to meet us at the place where we arrived a little further up the road and guided us to where she was. He took a picture of me and my sister in front of the beautiful resting place where her name was engraved. I don’t know how the picture came out, but later I thought that I might have been smiling too brightly. And after saying goodbye to her, we came down to Yangpyeong Station and sat in a restaurant near there until the poet’s train came, ordering Makgeolli and Guckbap, and eating together. It was just nice to be together. 

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  In fact, I have never had to say goodbye so permanently to someone I love, so I can’t possibly know what it feels like to lose a loved one. Even if I want to comfort the poet who lost his beloved wife or my sister that lost a close friend, I cannot. My only condolences were just the day I went to Jeju Island, where the poet lived, drinking so much that I was almost denied boarding, and crying like a baby all the way home from the back seat of my brother-in-law’s car. 

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  But what is clear is that the beautiful scenery of Jeju Island and her house that I experienced, the taste of fresh mackerel sashimi that I ate for the first time at a restaurant she took us to with the Jeju sea in the background, gifts of her artwork that were too good to receive, the fact that she must have participated in my projects without questioning only because she likes my sister and they were good friends, and the tangerine hairpin that reminds me of her every time I see it, which is still stuck in the head of a decorative rabbit doll instead of being pinned to my baby daughter because it is so cute. And most of all, the fact that she taught me ‘This is what love is like’ until the very end is her move.

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  Thanks to her, I was happy to be able to travel to Jeju with my sister and it was also nice to visit Yangpyeong with my sister, brother-in-law and the poet. While preparing for her exhibition with her husband and my sister, I was truly grateful for the fact that I was surrounded by such wonderful and beautiful people. Looking at her work that suits the word so perfectly, I also want to practice my own love with those beautiful people whom the artist loved. I love you.

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Sincerely, 

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Shinhae