The truth may reside behind absurdity. Fantasy may come from reality. Surrealism is more real than realism. My works do not come from my personal experience and surroundings alone, but exist as a hybridization of Chinese scenarios and Southern daydreams. I consider myself the ghostwriter of my works. In them, the “I” is reduced to a minimum.

I am fascinated by the ability of signs to flatten a location into graphic elements and to mediate our experience by manipulating expectation, language, and memory. Utilizing Florida as an influence for forms and color palette allows me to explore a sense of cultural belonging through commerce while also examining failed utopias.

I’m interested in the American Dream, the history of landscape painting, and the effects that “cultural ideals” have on both our environment and our national psyche. Persistently researching these topics has led me to create landscapes built on dichotomies: past and present, representation and abstraction, analog and digital, and stability and instability.

My current work deals with tiny people in large environments. Sometimes they are celebrities, sometimes they are me, sometimes they are imaginary people. I like to place these figures in odd situations or surroundings and see how they play off the space. I often think about how humans fit into this world and how small we actually are compared to the rest of the universe/multiverse. I am very interested in the purpose of human existence. It seems like we do a lot of weird shit for no reason.

My personal work explores the broad spectrum of the human condition. Ranging from youthful to mature content, the work encompasses and reveals the idea that while emotions are amorphous, each one emits a color that echoes complex emotional states that all of us can relate to—no matter what language we happen to speak.

Yue Li studied arts management before her formal training in studio art. Interested in addressing social issues through community-based art projects, she hopes to use these projects to discuss the issues facing artists in the twenty-first century, topics such as consumerism and status, and the complex relationship between these topics.

Humans seek to understand their relationship to the past by looking at the objects left behind by other humans. We look at structures, manuscripts, objects, and pictures as ways to connect with those who existed before us. By manipulating cultural residue from our past, my work raises the question of what human civilization will look like to future observers.

I paint objects that are integral to my personal narrative. These items are emblematic of the 1950s, an era of great productivity that reached a peak in the 1970s, when I was born. They served as the backdrop of my childhood in South Korea. In my paintings, I use a visible grid as a generative matrix to make representational work out of iconic items such as 1957 Coke bottles and caps, 1952 Volkswagen Beetles, and the toy soldier, all cultural icons of mass production. The products visualize, materialize, and recontextualize desire and belief. I place them within the grid

Unspeakable originated with my connection to Picasso’s Guernica. I feel compelled to return to this painting again and again, as it conveys extreme emotions for which words are insufficient. I embroider images of figures translated directly from Guernica. The series evolved to include imagery from other art-historical representations of distraught women by Kathe Köllwitz, Vincent van Gogh, and Frida Kahlo, as well as the preparatory sketches for Guernica. These women portray raw emotions—some are grotesque, nearly vulgar—reflecting the facial distortions of

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

1 pkg refrigerated pie crusts
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 cup milk
2 cups cooked chicken (season lightly)
1 12-ounce pkg frozen vegetables

Line 9-inch pan with pie crust.
Mix all ingredients together, pour into crust.
Lay second pie crust on top of filling.
Crimp edges.
Cut slits into top crust.
Bake 35 minutes, until golden brown.