The Art of Sedimentation: Letting Life Build in Layers
As 2026 unfolds, I’m choosing a different posture toward life and work.
Not acceleration.
Not optimization.
Not forcing clarity before it’s ready.
Instead, I’m choosing to enjoy the process of sedimentation — adding layers with patience and care, staying present with each phase, and allowing myself to be surprised by what emerges when things are given the time they need.
Sedimentation is not passive.
It is deliberate, attentive, and deeply alive.
Sedimentation without Rush
In nature, sedimentation is how landscapes are formed.
Particles settle.
Layers accumulate.
Pressure and time transform fragments into structure.
Nothing is rushed.
Nothing is skipped.
Nothing is wasted.
In a culture obsessed with immediacy, sedimentation asks something radical of us:
Stay. Let it build. Don’t rush the order.
This principle has become a quiet compass for me — not just in my art, but in how I approach growth, identity, and change.
What My Materials Have Taught Me
In my mixed-media paintings, I work with natural pigments and various binding media.
The order matters. Always.
The process follows a necessary sequence:
- Water-based layers — red algae, gum arabic
- Oil-based layers
- Wax-based layers
Once you move forward, you cannot go back.
You cannot paint water-based layers over oil.
You cannot rush drying time.
You cannot skip steps without destabilizing everything that follows.
Each layer must fully settle and dry before the next can begin.
If I try to hurry, the surface resists, cracks, or dulls.
If I ignore the order, the structure fails.
If I respect the process, something quietly strong emerges.
This is not just a technical constraint.
It’s a chemistry.
Life Has Layers Too
I’ve come to see how often we try to live against sedimentation.
We want clarity before experience.
Integration before exploration.
Meaning before mess.
We pile on new commitments before earlier layers have settled.
We move on before something has fully landed.
We rush to the “final version” without honoring what came before.
But some things in life — identity, creative voice, trust, belonging — don’t respond to pressure.
They respond to sequence.
They respond to patience.
They respond to presence over time.
Growth isn’t always about adding more.
Sometimes it’s about letting what’s already there settle into place.
Patience Is an Active Practice
Sedimentation doesn’t mean waiting passively.
It means:
- staying in relationship with what’s forming
- tending to the base so it can hold more
- resisting the urge to force coherence too soon
In art, this looks like honoring drying time.
In life, it looks like allowing questions to remain open.
In coaching, it looks like trusting that insight emerges when the conditions change.
Not everything needs immediate resolution.
Some things need space to become clear.
Layering Memories
One of the most important things sedimentation has taught me is this:
New layers don’t erase old ones.
They rest on them.
Each layer holds memories.
Your earlier selves don’t disappear.
Your past experiences don’t vanish.
They become the ground that holds what comes next.
When the base is stable, layering becomes generative rather than fragile.
This is how coherence forms.
Not by replacement, but by accumulation.
Setting Up Material Memory Studio as a Base
As I step into 2026, I’m grounding this learning in a physical place.
I’m opening Material Memory Studio, based near Mullae-dong in Seoul in early March 2026.
It will be a studio, an archive, and a quiet laboratory —
a stable base where sedimentation can happen even when I’m not there.
A place where works can sit.
Where materials can dry, grow, age, and transform.
Where unfinished processes are allowed to remain unfinished.
It will hold accumulated layers:
materials gathered from different geographies,
techniques encountered across practices,
stories, fragments, experiments, and residues of movement.
This is where I’ll bring back everything I collected on the road —
to connect dots,
to spark new chemistry,
to let time do some of the work for me.
Not everything needs to be in motion all the time.
Some things need a home where they can settle.
A Reflection for You
As you move into this new year, you might ask yourself:
👉 What layer in your life needs more time before the next one is added?
👉 Where are you rushing the order — and what happens if you don’t?
👉 What would it mean to trust sedimentation instead of speed?
You don’t have to hurry the becoming.
You don’t have to force the form.
Let the layers arrive in their own time.
Let them build.
Let them hold.
— Jay
