Photo by Marc Miller (Courtesy of Se Jong Cho)
By Pierce Johnson
Art and science: two worlds we often consider as diametrically opposed; on the poles of evaluating and understanding reality. However, this is not the case for Se Jong Cho. A Korean-born environmental scientist and painter, she strives to expose the true relationship between the sciences and the arts, and find ways to use elements of one field in the other.
Her scientific background does not ingrain her in reality, but her artistic side does not totally bring her to the exclusively magical, as surreal as her works can be. But she does admit that there are things science cannot explain or touch, places in our body and mind that only art can probe despite the inquiries of neuroscientists.
And as much as I wish to have spoken with her in-person, especially as she is currently featured at Catalyst Contemporary, the constraints of time and resources made me settle for a Zoom call. Yet, that alone was a valuable experience. As in speaking with Se Jong, it became apparent how extensive the relationship between the artistic and scientific realms is in her life, whether that be how it influences her paintings and methods, the workshops she has organized and dialogue she has started, or even her life’s journey to where she is now.
Pierce Johnson:
To start off, various websites describe you as a scientist and engineer with an interest in painting, whereas others, such as your own, have it as more of both sort of being your profession. Would you consider either profession your primary? Would you give both a similar status? Or how would you describe it?
Se Jong Cho:
Well, that’s a really good question. And I’ve been really thinking about that a lot. So I’ll just give you a bit of a brief background on why I started painting. …You know, since I was little, I wanted to become an artist of some sort, but at the same time, I also wanted to become a scientist. In middle school, I was really obsessed with Michael Crighton. But I know my earliest memory is just pen drawing and making cartoons. I mean, growing up in Korea, we didn’t call it anime, but manga and anime. So I always drew those characters. But I moved to this country when I was 17, with the dream of going to universities and becoming successful—you know, American dream. I was at Montgomery College, I started off at a community college and then transferred to a four-year university.
And later, my first year, one of the things about community college was that it allowed me to experiment and take different classes because it was affordable. So I took Drawing one and two, and Painting one and two, because I knew I wanted to become a studio art major, but at the same time, I took Calculus one and two and Physics one and two, and I was pretty good at those science and engineering classes. And my advisor at the time asked me if I want to consider engineering as my major. And at the time I didn’t even know what engineering was. I mean, my English was limited. And I never considered becoming an engineer before, but I realized that that’s a viable option. And I thought in order to succeed in this country, maybe I should choose a more practical major like that. So I changed my major to civil engineering and I transferred to Northwestern.
And then I finished my bachelor’s and then I moved back to Baltimore and got into this program… I just kept pursuing my academic career in engineering and science. And then, you know eventually I got my PhD in environmental engineering and I really found my pursuit in science very satisfying, especially because there’s a lot of work to do. And I feel a certain conviction that I could make a difference in the world by studying this field. So all the while I stopped painting for about 12, 13 years. I tried to paint somewhere in between those years while I was pursuing my education in engineering, but it never stuck because I was kind of overwhelmed with the feeling that I need to create something unique and original, and that kind of overwhelmed me and I just stopped. But maybe the third year into my PhD program, I was really frustrated because science moves really slowly.
You know, scientific process is consensual. You have to publish peer review articles and it goes through multiple. So it’s a very slow process. And I was kind of frustrated, and had some self doubts about my aptitude, and I started painting cause I had this canvas that I was carrying around for about 10 years. It was blank canvas, and I painted something and that was seven years ago and I finished it and it felt really good. And then I just never stopped and I got better over the years and I think it’s been seven years that I consistently painted and built up my career. And in the beginning, when I first started painting while I was still pursuing my PhD, I thought those are two parallel pathways. And I thought that for a long time until recently, and then I realized that actually they’re not parallel. The line between art and science is permeable.
Part of it is because science is a field to explore the world and express it in a way that allows us to make practical decisions and expand our understanding and control over the world. [Art] is different, but it also involves engaging ourselves with the world and expressing that engagement. So more recently I thought science and art are not that different. I don’t have to think of them as separate things, but in the practical sense, you know, being a scientist is a full-time job. I mean, I can only paint during the weekends. But last year I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Socio- Environmental Synthesis Center of the University of Maryland [SESYNC] in Annapolis. This research center is unique in that it brings multidisciplinary scientists from all over the world to think about environmental problems, not as just ecological and environmental discipline, but, you know, looking at … a complex social problem that we have to think about economics, cultural and social life, as well as ecology and hydrology and stuff like that.
So when I was up at SESYNC (that’s the acronym for Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, scientists love acronyms!) I had an opportunity to submit a proposal to hold our own workshop. So two other postdocs who happen to love art and I decided to put together a proposal to investigate whether environmentally-themed art can have quantifiable outcomes… say environmental public art that focuses on ecology or environmental problems. If you place that in a social setting, will that change people’s individual behavior and translate into quantifiable environmental outcomes?
So we were given a National Science Foundation grant to investigate that topic. And we had an opportunity to invite, I think, 10 to 15 scientists and artists from all over the world. We had artists come all the way from Australia as well as one from Portland, Oregon, who does this environmental mural art as well as social psychologists from Stanford, the University of Arizona… basically all over the world.
And we had a three or four day intensive and immersive workshop to talk about environmental art, human behavior and how human behavior and attitude can be altered as a result of intervention. And we started thinking about it as a form of intervention and that workshop really changed how I looked at art and science. That’s a workshop that really blurred the boundary between art and science. And I realized after that workshop that because I am a painter, but also a very dedicated scientist, I have a unique platform to communicate environmental problems through art and through science. So now, my response to the question that you pose is that they are intertwined. I don’t think I can really untangle how much time I spend on art, how much time I spend on science, because I’m constantly thinking about both!
It’s actually funny, you mentioned the art workshop I was going to ask about. So the intention of establishing and theorizing how art affects us is psychological, correct? Can you tell us any of these ideas that were developed [at the workshop]? Or, because there was also mention of a multidisciplinary art installation, will these ideas be confidential until that exhibition comes out?
No. No… I’m all about transparency! I know some scientists are really protective of their ideas, but I have a different philosophy. I think if I am transparent on what I’m researching because I’m a limited person, everybody, I think, can make better science through inviting diverse perspectives and including people from multiple backgrounds. So now I love to talk about it and it’s a still evolving paper. It’s taking longer than I would like to take. But, you know, writing this paper has been a different challenge than writing a scientific paper because I had to read additional literature that I was not previously familiar with. So I had to read a lot of books on social theory and human psychology and behavioral literature.
The paper’s almost finished. We held a workshop last year, just before the pandemic, and I’d been working in my spare time writing this paper and reading relevant books. And one of my favorite books that I discovered during this writing process was Uncommon Ground by William Cronon. He edited this book that compiles multiple issues on environmental problems, and how as the human species we’re approaching environmental problems and how it is wrong-headed. So when I first held a workshop, I focused on individual behavior, but as I researched the paper more and read more papers, I realized that individual behavior maybe should not be the focus. It should be at the community level.
Sure. I mean, collectively individual behavior change could result in environmental outcomes, but a lot of the environmental problems that we’re facing are social problems that have to be examined through a perspective of community. So the paper has now evolved to thinking about how to engage the community in environmental issues instead of engaging at an individual level.
It was a learning process writing that paper. So I’m expecting to complete the paper and submit it for publication probably before summer. But in the meantime, you know, the paper was scholarly exploration and we don’t have any field data to really back up what we’re claiming. So through the workshop we came up with a conceptual framework that ties environmental public art as a social intervention. And we also identified all the relevant, social, cultural, and economic factors—factors that should be considered in placement of public art, and also theorize how that will affect both individual and community outcomes.
I think it is critical for scientists and artists, social scientists, natural scientists, artists, social activists to form a coalition to really tackle environmental problems. And in the United States and elsewhere environmental problems are also a social inequality problem. I mean, look at Flint, Michigan… people who are affected by climate change are, you know, predominantly underprivileged, lower income people of color, indigenous people. That’s why I started thinking of the problem more as a community problem instead of an individual problem. Publishing the paper is a first good step…but, you know, that’s all good theorizing and scholarly exercise.
But now I’m at a point to translate that into something more, in real life. So I’m actually working with some of the urban farmers in Baltimore and community organizers who are adapting abandoned lots in Baltimore and turning them into gardens for flowers and food. And we’re forming a collaboration and we’re planning on submitting a proposal to get some grants, to test out the ideas that came up in that workshop. So it’s cool that we’re doing this interview because it’s been one year since I did the workshop and now I’ve had time to think about, and contemplate that issue while working on the paper. And I made a point to translate that into something more actionable.
So that’s where I am now. Hopefully we’ll get the grant and then that will be a way to use art to inform the community about environmental issues. We’re planning on creating a program of art shows to exhibit some of the Baltimore artists who think about environmental issues, as well as scientist friends that I have. And we’ll try to create a platform to both display more traditional art, as well as scientific information at a community setting. And then we’ll figure out how to somehow use that opportunity to support local efforts to convert Baltimore and other city environments to a greener city.
Very nice. Going off the community aspect and the number of people you work with—conservationists, regulatory agencies, farmers—what’s it like working with people from such different, I would imagine, positions or occupations?
You know, that’s a really good question. And I struggled with that for a long time. In order to complete PhD, you have to take a qualifying exam, you have to defend your dissertation. After my qualifying exam, my professor, my advisor asked me where I stand in the field of science. And I couldn’t really answer that question. At that time I felt really bad that I couldn’t answer that question, but now I understand because that was a very difficult question I wasn’t ready to answer at the time. My PhD advisor and I were doing something very different in terms of scientific research—we were trying to create a kind of way to integrate science and policy.
And I realized that I exist in the intersection of science and policy. I think it is extremely important that we utilize scientific information in policy decision-making because science can offer a lot of useful and practical information to make better decisions to manage and regulate our environmental resources. That’s one of the reasons why I have so many opportunities to work with not only scientists, but with policy makers and NGOs—I’ve worked with the Nature Conservancy, the World Resources Institute, and Conservation International. Those are three large NGOs whose mission is really to elevate conservation issues in policy.
I think I’m trying to emulate what I have done in science in art too, because that’s what I know. I know how to collaborate with different types of people. I didn’t realize it was a skillset, but it’s a skillset I have accumulated these past several years. Now I’m trying to come up with an actionable aspect of my environmental art conceptual model into something that we can do in actuality, by collaborating with urban farmers, scientists, community organizers and activists, as well as artists.
On the topic of integrating science into an artistic practice,, your work featured at Catalyst Contemporary, Eclipse: Infinite Ending was inspired by the eclipse of 2017, correct? And across all these images are solar and perhaps stellar imagery, which I’ve noticed looking at other series such as Mattise in Bath, Tobagon (2018) and Woman with Hair in the Air (2018), and even in a painting from 2015, Roof with Chairs—two years before the eclipse. There’s a lot of stellar or solar imagery throughout those. Would you say the solar image is kind of a staple of yours, a signature, or would I be mistaken? And if it’s not, I guess, what attracts you to this sort of sun?
Tobagon (2018) (Courtesy of sejongee.com)
Well, I mean, sun just kind of defines our reality, right? It’s unavoidable! But I would say that I’m not sure if I have a signature yet—I’m still learning how to paint and learning how to unfold this creative process. So I’m just kind of exploring whatever speaks to me and if it rings. So yeah, like I said, I only really started painting seven years ago and seven years of painting is really not a long time. There are artists who have spent decades before they have really cracked it. I mean, I think Jackson Pollock didn’t come to his drip painting until his mid career. Right? So I don’t know what my signature topic is yet. I’m just kind of exploring… I also recognize that this is not a process that could be rushed, so I’m just taking time, and really try to have fun.
I do get sometimes this… I don’t know, urge to be better and be famous, whatever, but you know… that shouldn’t really be the focus. I’m really trying to appreciate the artistic process that is forcing me to reflect on who I am. So I’m just kind of taking in what I observe, and trying to be sensitive on what really rings with my inner self. And… I have to say seeing the solar eclipse in 2017 was an awesome experience. For however long it lasted, it’s an experience that you see that reminds you of that stellar composition that we live in. You know, it’s easy to look at the sun and take it for granted.
And, I mean, it’s just like the essence of everything, right? Sun is like this orange globe, but if you really think about it, we are moving around the sun, not the sun going around our sky. And it’s a reminder of how much delusion there is that sustains our lives. And there’s certain joy to kind of crack that delusion and see the truth behind it. And maybe that’s why I was attracted to the sun so much, because it’s an opportunity to really physically feel that “capital T truth” of life. So yeah, I mean, and I did that and I also painted the whole Mattise series because, like I said, I’m still learning how to be an artist and… my creative process. And Matisse was an interesting topic because when I first saw Matisse at BMA, that was before I started painting and I thought it was okay, it’s just sloppy lines and some colors. And then I saw it after I started painting. And I realized, you know, how amazing that a painting at BMA is. I think it’s a large reclining nude the, the colors, the sensibility, I realized that achieving the simplest simplicity that he, Matisse, does so well is not so simple. So I want you to really take that opportunity to expand my creative expression by using Matisse as a foundation. And that has kind of, that way of approaching art, I think it’s informed by scientific training because in science we realize how- we realize the incremental nature of knowledge production. When I write papers, I cite all the authors that came before me. That has allowed me to contribute new knowledge.
And that new knowledge is valid because there’s the foundation of all the previous authors who have done their work and famously, I think Newton said that he was able to see the world as he did because he stood on the shoulders of previous giants. So I realized that I live in a continuum, and the initial fear that I had of making art that stopped me from making art, was how original work can I create? How significant would I be? That was the kind of fear that prevented me from making art before and now realizing that I exist in the continuum. I can create something that’s unique because there are people before me who created beautiful art that I can learn from and, and, and doing the whole Mattise series was kind of putting that to practice.
Matisse has created all this beautiful art exposing us to different color combinations and how different minds and shapes can really elevate the audience. I wanted to kind of take that and see if I can mix it with my own sense of the world and create something new, and could also elevate my audience. So, to answer your question, I can run rambling for a while, but, you know, I’m still kind of exploring who I am as an artist, and I don’t know if I’ll ever stop, and maybe that’s the beauty of it; that I can constantly evolve by exposing myself to other brilliant people in the world who is creating something amazing, and try to find my style and my passion.
On your page, it says you resumed painting out of frustration while studying your PhD. And I guess even today, it says you appear to try and pursue doubts and serve yourself. I have a great quote I found, I believe at the end one paragraph on your website was, “I still have to reassure myself that I can turn this shit–paintings often look like shit in the beginning–to gold.” Do you consider this sort of feeling the positive that drives you forward to prove and explore, or it is, it may be something you wish to overcome one day perhaps maybe leave behind?
So I still think that way, I mean… I painted for awhile, so I know I can paint, but every time I start a new painting, it’s still nerve wracking because when you first started painting, it looks so bad! And, you know, when you just start putting little pigments just looks messy. It’s just, you have to believe that you can turn that into something good. And I was, when I said turning into gold, I was referring to the alchemy. So I read a book called What Painting Is… it’s a book primarily about oil paint and how there’s a long history of before chemistry came around, the alchemy. And essentially painting is kind of that; that process of turning into gold that alchemists have obsessed with for centuries.
But I find that a useful analogy because painting is kind of like that, you create something out of nothing really. But in order to create something out of nothing, you not only need the materials like paint and brush, but you need kind of a faith in yourself, a trust in your ability that you can carry this through. So it’s a constant reminder. That’s why I wrote that there.
I guess alchemy is kind of magical, I guess we might call it a precursor to chemistry though, not really a science today. But you have referred to painting as a magical operation. And I guess while they often juxtaposed, the magical and the scientific, surreal and reality, do you see both as necessary and valid, especially in regards to communicating, conveying ideas and messages?
I think so. Do you know, Cecil Taylor, a jazz musician? He said the lowest form of magic is logic. Very smart quote, but I believe in the magic of art, I’m sure we can analyze it. I’m sure there are neuroscientists who are examining how brains respond to artistic experience, but our understanding of consciousness and brain activity are still very minimal. So given that there is no really scientific explanation, I believe in the magic of art. I mean, so first I talked about how one part of the magic of art is it enabled me to create something out of nothing. And through the process trust in myself, trust in my abilities, that’s one magic, because sometimes self esteem and faith in one, a built once ability doesn’t come around very easily. And the fact that painting has allowed me to discover that I think that’s magical, and it was extremely important for my scientific career to get a PhD is very difficult. And I had many doubts whether I can complete it writing a dissertation. My dissertation was 300 pages on how to manage landscape, to minimize water pollution in the upper Midwest. The part of the country, the bread basket of the world, really, they produce a lot of food products. And you know, that was not a trivial activity, and I was able to complete it because I learned the incremental nature of anything painting or core scientific process. It gave me that kind of confidence to carry that immense task through. A second magical operation is that I think art can touch people where science cannot.
Science is really good at communicating factual matter, but actually shifting someone’s attitude and perception of the world—art has the potential to do that effectively. And it’s because the artist’s life still could have a very diverse experience, but you’re still one person. I think when artists present a piece of art and the audience sees it there’s a whole new process that happens, and that’s a magical operation. It’s when artists’ conscious being that—helping create whatever the art mixes with the perception of the audience and create something new—starts something inside the audience, you know, and, and that’s kind of magical operation that we don’t really have a lot of explanation for. I read some papers on neurology of how different parts of the brain lights up when one sees a painting or art. And, you know, I think that’s a magical operation.
All right. I guess one final question here, it’s a bit more of a miscellaneous question, but according to the World Research Institute, you collaborate with your husband, Marc, who has composed music based on your paintings. Can you elaborate or describe the music for me? And do you often play this alongside your paintings at shows or anything, or is this something more personal in the home?
I mean, so I talked about how much I like to collaborate, because there’s so much, there’s like this multiple, like what do you call it? Multiplying effects by combining one’s head with, with another’s head and trying to think about a problem. And I have this amazing resource at home. My husband creates this beautiful music, and I had a show where I had featured a lot of clouds, clouds and sun are my favorite topics right now, and also some planets.
I decided to have a show of clouds, and clouds are evaporative, and music is evaporative. And I had this idea, “Wouldn’t it be really cool if I have a show with Marc, and who can compose like kind of ambient music?” And that idea over time kind of evolved by talking with Marc. And he brought his own insights into the conversation because he plays music a lot. And, and knows a lot about audio equipment. So we had this idea of composing for different pieces of music in each speaker place, each of the composition, and will be placed on the four corners of the gallery and the audience can move them and situate them to mix their own music, because by placing yourself in different part of the music you hear a different intensity of the four different compositions. So that made the art exhibit really interesting, just staring at the visual images, it made it dynamic and also interactive. And I really like that aspect of that collaboration. Collaboration really expands the experience of going to a show So we did another collaboration when I had the Matisse show at the Crown Gallery. He also composed a series of music that they played 12 hours on a loop.
But I do wanna do more of that kind of stuff. I was for awhile planning a show with a dancer who we had the idea of projecting my paintings onto her and a screen and have kind of like improvise music from my husband. So it would be a three-way collaboration. So we’re still thinking about that, but I’m always looking for an interesting way of presenting my painting.
Well, interesting indeed. I guess that’s all the questions I have for you. You’re obviously featured at Catalyst Contemporary right now. Any other upcoming shows you’d like to advertise, or anything else you’d like to say to me, the university, the class, or otherwise?
Botanical Eclipse: Black Widow from Eclipse: Infinite Ending, currently featured at Catalyst Contemporary (courtesy of sejongee.com)
Let me think. Well, I mean, I hope that I was able to provide you with satisfactory answers within our materials to write your report. And I think it’s really awesome that Michael is teaching this class. Cause I think it’s important to have this kind of conversation because our artists alone cannot really do all of it. You know, some artists are not good at communicating and that’s when journalists can come in and tease out some of the essential information. So I think it’s really great that Michael is teaching this class.
Right. I’ll definitely pass on the message. But yeah, I guess did you still want to show me any of the paintings or do you feel like you need to go and do their stuff right now?
I’ll show you two most recent paintings. They’re not available anywhere. So that, and I’ll also tell you where I got the idea from again, I think, you know, I exist in continuum and I’m constantly inspired by those other brilliant people who’ve done something awesome before me. What was I going to say? I forget what I was going to say about them. Okay.
So this is a painting I just finished a month ago. There’ll be 12 of these paintings. I’m working on the third and fourth one right now. So these are basically my calendars. I’ll just show you. So this board is calendar for January, 2020. January 1st [points at calendar], January 31st. And these are when I had my periods [points at intricate streams of blood, appearing to rise without restrictions of gravity]. And I got the idea of doing this painting when I was reading The New Yorker last September 14th of 2020. There was an extensive interview and profile of this video artist named Pipilotti Rist, R I S T. So she’s famous for creating these really amazing visual images. I don’t know if you’ve been to Glenstone. It’s a museum in North Potomac. I highly recommend that once the pandemic restrictions are lifted to visit. It’s a huge modern art museum on like, I think a 200 acre plot. So what the museum has hosted Rist’s paintings, the video of a woman walking around with this giant flower stick and smashing car windows. That was Rist…Rist’s video art. And she talked about how she created this video of copious amounts of period blood, and people were turned off by it. The critics said that she was taking feminism too far, but at the same time she had this other video, I think it was called Friendly Porno or something.
And there’s video of lots of friendly looking penises and people are okay with that one. So she wanted to understand why there is this two contrasting reactions to her video art, like why are people so appalled by periods and menstruation? And I got really interested in the two, and while reading The New Yorker an idea kind of popped in my head when Rist talked about menstruation as being this cool flesh clock. And I kind of took that idea, and decided to make a painting of, you know, recording my menstruation in the year 2020 when the time was really disrupted, and became so distorted. So I feel like that’s a good way to kind of Chronicle the weirdest year that I’ve experienced in my life and also to pay tribute to Rist’s groundbreaking work and create my own paintings. So this is a good example of how I am—my creative process is cumulative.