Each year The Rembrandt Club, an arts organization that has been supporting the arts at Pomona College for more than one hundred years, offers awards to junior art majors that will allow them to further their knowledge about the art and design that inspires them in their own practices. During the past Summer of 2019, Nicole Choi and Jordi Pedroza traveled to other continents across the globe to explore art institutions and learn about the various art practices that will embolden and inform their own work during their final year here at Pomona. This afternoon they each spoke about their experiences sharing images and stories of their excursions.
According to Nicole Choi, “identity and community” are the themes she most readily embraces in her work. Being a Korean-American who grew up in Hong Kong, she framed her experience around the term Anamnesis, which means “the remembering of things from a supposed past experience.” Although she speaks Mandarin and English, she hardly has any knowledge of Korean so she desired to journey to Seoul, Korea, to hunker down and study Korean culture, specifically art, both traditional and contemporary art, craft-focused and politically minded. This trip gave her an opportunity to see works by a variety of Korean artists who were working in craft-focused practices such as traditional painting styles and contemporary installation. Thinking about the craft and cultural references in these works, Choi will set about creating her new version of identity and community, one that is informed by the precise techniques of Korean painting and the social and political aspects of contemporary Korean art.
Inspired by inclusive design books that art professor Michael O’Malley shared with him, Jordi Pedroza went to the Royal College of Art in London and to Vancouver, BC, to engage with makers and designers of industrial objects that had inclusivity in mind. He shared the quote by the director of The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art that most inspired him: “We as educators and students need to start taking action when it comes to creating an environment that can be shared by all… Life isn’t specific. We all live and we all deserve the right to be comfortable so it’s time to start.” Pedroza shared a series of projects that various research fellows there were working on and found one that particularly sparked his interest. It was a chair that had an elongated back and an enclosed canopy of sorts that enveloped the person sitting in it creating a comfortable, peaceful and immersive environment.
From their various expeditions across the globe, Nicole Choi and Jordi Pedroza found much inspiration in what they saw and experienced that will most definitely influence the works that they make this year in preparation for their senior thesis. They expressed their gratitude to the Rembrandt Club members who sat in the audience listening to their transformative journeys. I found myself better understanding the work that they have done in the past, and will do in the future, and the reasons why they do what they do.