Grounded Yet Free

There was a time when I thought I had to choose.

Either I would be grounded — stable, rooted, responsible.

Or I would be free — mobile, expansive, unbound.

I didn’t yet know I could be both.

It took a mountain to teach me that.

Memories That Travel Forward

We often think memory only moves backward.

But sometimes memory is prophetic.

Last year, in a darkroom in New York City, I created a chemigram series of mountains. The forms emerged slowly — through chemistry, exposure, accident, and timing.

I wasn’t referencing a specific landscape.

I was simply responding to what appeared in the tray.

Sharp, wild, vertical forms.

Almost architectural.

Like a solitary monument rising from emptiness.

I didn’t know then that I would later stand in Svalbard, in the Arctic, looking at a mountain called the Obelisk — and feel a shock of recognition.

It looked like my chemigram.

Or perhaps my chemigram had been looking for it all along.

That moment unsettled me in the best way. It felt as though something in me had already known a place I had not yet visited.

Maybe memory is not only about the past.

Maybe it’s also about the future we are quietly moving toward.

Sometimes we create images before we live into them.

Wanting Opposites

For much of my adult life, I’ve lived in motion.

Seoul.

San Francisco.

Mexico City.

Berlin.

Paris.

The Arctic.

Suitcases, residencies, projects, exhibitions, coaching clients across time zones.

And yet beneath the movement was a deep desire:

I wanted to feel more grounded.

At the same time, I refused to give up freedom.

The world often frames this as a binary:

Stability or exploration.

Base or expansion.

Root or wing.

But standing before that Arctic mountain, I understood something.

A mountain is the most grounded form in nature.

And yet, it shapes weather.

It influences currents.

It affects everything around it.

It does not move — but it changes the movement of others.

And wings?

Wings do not require the absence of roots.

They require strength.

I realized I didn’t want to choose between mountain and sky.

I wanted to become a mountain with wings.

Staying Rooted While Border-Crossing

As 2026 begins, I’m anchoring this understanding in something tangible.

I’m establishing a studio base near Mullae-dong in Seoul.

For the first time in years, I am creating a stable production sanctuary — a physical place where materials can rest, where layers can sediment, where archives can accumulate, where long processes can unfold without interruption.

It will be my ground.

But it will not be a cage.

I will still travel.

Still gather.

Still cross borders — geographic, professional, creative.

The difference is this:

I will return.

Ideas will reconvene.

Materials will be integrated.

Experiments will compound instead of scatter.

The studio will not only be a workspace.

It will be a hub — a place to invite collaborators, artists, thinkers.

A place where conversations can root deeply before branching outward.

Roots don’t limit reach.

They enable it.

The Architecture of Identity

For years, I lived like a branch searching for soil.

Now I am choosing to grow from it.

Identity is not a location.

It’s a dynamic architecture.

The mountain does not abandon its ground to touch the sky.

It rises from it.

Freedom without grounding becomes drift.

Grounding without freedom becomes stagnation.

Holding both creates direction.

The chemigram mountain in New York.

The Obelisk in Svalbard.

The studio in Seoul.

They are not separate chapters.

They are layers of the same becoming.

A Reflection for You

Perhaps you, too, feel this tension:

👉 A longing for stability — and a refusal to shrink your expansion.

👉 A desire for roots — without losing range.

👉 A call to build something solid — while still crossing your own borders.

What if you don’t have to choose?

What if you could design a life grounded enough to hold you — and expansive enough to let you move?

Where in your life are you ready to become a mountain with wings?

— Jay