Beyond the Page: Gumi

Gumi is a Volume 15 Sketchbook Project participant and multimedia artist currently based in Honolulu, Hawaii. Working primarily in fiber arts in the form of weavings and embroideries, Gumi creates colorful, layered works that simultaneously reference nostalgic motifs from their childhood and the growth and decay that has since absorbed them.

Read on below to learn more about Gumi’s practice, process and the inspiration behind their work.

Tell us about yourself!

Hey, I’m Gumi and I’m a non-binary, Asian-American artist born and raised in Hawaii. I like making weird stuff out of whatever I can find and hope it’s fun for people to look at!

When were you first introduced to art? How has your art evolved over the years?

I think like most people I was introduced to making art as a child and haven’t really stopped creating since then. The animated television shows, films, and video games I liked as a child became my biggest initial drive to producing artwork. Initially when I started college I wanted to be a part of the industry that inspired me to create in the first place and was hoping to learn about what it took to be an animator or concept artist. However, while in college I became more engrossed in the various mediums that were presented in the art classes I was taking. I went from oil painting to film photography to printmaking, before settling on digital imaging for my BFA and took a weaving class during my second to last semester which really shook up how I was making and thinking about art. The fibers class had such a huge impact on my art making that the work I included in the BFA show was primarily composed of fiber art, rather than anything that would fall under digital imaging. However, I try to utilize the various concepts and methods of doing things that I’ve internalized from all of the different art classes that I’ve taken throughout the years.  

What mediums do you work in now?

I typically try to work with whatever I can get my hands on or feel a fleeting interest in. However, I now most consistently create work in fibers mostly in the form of weaving and embroidery.  

What subjects and themes are you interested in?

Generally the work that I share deals with nostalgia and how past memories and feelings can be twisted when using them as a form of escapism. My artwork references both things that I enjoyed or was repulsed by as a child. Due to my assigned gender at birth certain activities, interests, way of having to dress, colors and so forth were either deemed to be appropriate or inappropriate for me in my formative years and I resented that. However, looking back on those times now things seemed so much simpler and even comforting in comparison to the anxieties I have as an adult. While it’s not as though objectively awful events didn’t happen when I was a child, I simply could not fully grasp the magnitude of such occurrences so by extension most of my struggles as a youth that I can remember involved loathing the gender role I was assigned.   

What are sources of inspiration for you?

The content of my work is influenced by the media which sparks a sense of nostalgia in me. Whether or not I had any real, positive contact with these things as a child they capture the essence of stuff I remember being around. Fairy Kei, Vaporwave, toys and advertisements from the 1980s to 1990s, amongst countless other things have shaped the themes present in my current work. Many of the artists who I follow on various social media platforms through sharing their own art have shown me unique ways of thinking about how I can physically manifest my ideas in an interesting way with both media I’m familiar and unfamiliar with.   

When did you participate in the sketchbook project? What was that process like for you?

I participated in Sketchbook Project Volume 15! I sporadically began making work in the sketchbook from April through July of last year. Initially when I started the sketchbook I didn’t have too much of an idea of what kind of overall theme I wanted for it or if I wanted it to even be a cohesive experience at all! The first pages were mostly experimenting to see how the sketchbook’s paper would hold up to the chaotic layering that I’d normally execute on heavier weight papers generally more suited to wet media. However, as I continued creating work in the sketchbook its contents naturally sort of evolved into something of an informal diary. When I look back on it now a lot of the pages seem to reference my frustrations at feeling a loss of identity during my final semester of college while completing my BFA.   

The process for creating artwork within the sketchbook began long before I ever held it in my own hands. In which I mean I’m a bit of a hoarder and enjoying holding onto magazine clippings, candy wrappers, stickers, stationery sets, amongst numerous other things I find appealing. So these various bits of materials are integrated into the artwork at different stages, but I typically start a sketchbook spread by smearing acrylic paint onto the pages with my fingers and applying larger pieces of paper ephemera to the still wet paint. Once the first layer is more or less dry the second layer is made up of scrawling generated with crayons, oil pastels, and colored pencils. The ensuing layer introduces more acrylic paint though it’s diluted with gel mediums so it’s much more translucent than the first layer. While the paint is still wet I smoosh smaller bits of ephemera into it, typically it’s speech bubbles from old manga, candy wrappers, traced text from magazines, or flake stickers. By that point I generally have the larger English text on vellum or tracing paper trimmed down and ready to be adhered to the page as well. Once the English text layer is on I let it completely let it dry before adding a final layer of embellishments. This can include glitter, small polymer clay accents, or further additions with crayons, while my overall process is quite unrefined I’m careful not to obscure the English text too much.  

Can you share a little about the significance of the text in your sketchbook?

Generally the English text present in some of my work is intentionally a bit ambiguous and often formatted as a question. I enjoy hearing about how these questions are interpreted or answered by someone viewing the art. I treat the work as sort of an informal Rorschach test with one’s reading of the text potentially being affected by the font, colors, composition, ephemera present, the viewer’s own mood, or other factors that I nor the viewer can fully grasp.

All that said I occasionally do have a particular answer in mind for the questions present in the artwork. However, the answers would be unreadable for an individual who can only read English as they are in languages which reference my ethnic background or the answers have been physically made unreadable due to the way the work is layered. Only my past self in that very specific point in time will truly know how I wanted the work to be read, as I myself may at some point forget the answer that was once visible.  

How do your soft sculptures relate to your 2D work?

Aside from sharing relatively similar color palettes, the attempt to depict both nostalgia and decay in a singular work is present in both my collage and fiber work. However, with my fiber art I lean more heavily into representing the decay by vaguely referencing fungi or internal anatomy  which has absorbed some of the overly saccharine motifs from my childhood. Where most may see soft, inviting environments in my embroidery pieces, I see pustule-like fungi or mold upon something which has gone rotten a long time ago.

Do you keep sketchbooks regularly?

I regularly keep and purchase physical sketchbooks, but unfortunately don’t create as much work in them as I’d like in terms of planning out new pieces and such. Most of my sketchbooks are filled with character art and doodles that have little to do with the work I actually do share online. However, I am keeping a sketchbook/diary that’s very much in the spirit of the work I made in the sketchbook that was sent off to Brooklyn.

How has the current quarantine affected your art-making/ process?

While I’m a relatively reclusive individual and create most of my work in the same place that I live in, I may be under the impression that I’d be suited for making artwork while under quarantine. Sadly that simply is not the case for whatever reason generating new artwork has been harder than ever for me.

How can people support your work?

If anyone is interested in my art they can follow me over on my instagram (https://www.instagram.com/unfiltered.ooze/) or tumblr (https://gummygunk.tumblr.com).

If someone really likes my work and is financially able to, they can buy me a “coffee” over on Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/gummygunk) or buy something from my online shop (https://www.gummygunk.com)!