Amie: Hong Sook Kim Chung

By Peter Chung

AMIE contains 194 drawings, 16 oil paintings, 28 watercolors, 25 ceramics, and 132 illustrations. All are chosen from the artworks Amie had crafted for nearly three decades of her lifetime. The inclusion of an oil painting Unfinished Still Life accounts for her ill health. Amie is the pet name for the author’s wife, Hong Sook Kim Chung. The author narrates his remarks on them to hope AMIE will give a savor and inspiration to readers, regardless of their age, interest, and artistic inclination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Dec 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781698704708

Peter Chung

Peter Chung is a graduate of Purdue University and a professor emeritus at Hallym University. He is the author of the Selected Poems of Korean Minstrel Kim Sat Gat and My Love.

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© Copyright 2020 Peter Chung.

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ISBN: 978-1-6987-0471-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6987-0470-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020923399

Trafford rev. 12/10/2020

                                        ON THE FRONT COVER:

Self-Portrait (1985)

                                        Commentary on page 134

                                        ON THE BACK COVER:

Progress of Garlic (1982)

                                        Commentary on page 8

Counterpoint with Mirror (1985)

                                        Commentary on page 154

Grooved Jar (1984)

                                        Commentary on page 186

Fortune in Year of Rat (1995)

                                        Commentary on page 198

To

Amie, my wife

Whose creative endeavors are thriving in AMIE

Preface

AMIE contains 194 drawings, 16 oil paintings, 28 watercolors, 25 ceramics, and 132 illustrations, my wife Amie had crafted during her fleeting stay on earth despite her fragile health. Amie I used to call my wife was abbreviated initially from two words symbolizing the beautiful wife in Korean. It also matches with a lifelong companion just like a female friend in French. In my early fifties I realized it had esoterically connoted Amitabha, the Buddha of Infinite Light.

Amie was born Hong Sook Kim as the fifth of seven siblings in 1956. Her unyielding craving for learning made her enter an elementary school in 1961, which was two years earlier than usual. In her childhood she used to draw on paper various figures in attires and shoes, scissor them out of paper and play alone with them. At her sixth grade in 1966 she won the highest prize at the national Boys Art Contest organized by the Boys Korea Daily. Graduating from a girls’ high school, she had to major in chemistry at a university in 1973 at her father’s advice even though she wanted to study fine arts. Our first encounter happened at an orientation for chemistry freshmen, kindled a fervid love to each other, and culminated in a marriage on December 25, 1975.

In August 1979 we went to West Lafayette for my doctorate at Purdue University. Amie took fine arts courses at Purdue and most of the drawings, oil paintings, watercolors and ceramics had been made in West Lafayette. Most of the potpourri illustrations, on the other hand, had been created from spring 1973 to spring 1979.

In March 1986 we returned to Korea where Amie wanted me to start my academic career. On my sabbatical leave in 1989 we stayed in Liverpool where Amie was not able to stand the climate. She had to return home alone in late February 1990. Her physical condition started to gradually deteriorate in the early 1990s and one or two month-long hospitalization ensued twice a year. In September 1999, even a medical treatment wreaked havoc on her fragile health at the hospital and led her to a coma that lasted a few months. Despite her doctor’s account of the irreversible damage, she wakened murmuring a few times an indiscernible syllable I understood as water in Korean. In February 2000, she was discharged from the hospital without being fully recovered from the aftereffect. Rehabilitation training became her daily routine, that helped her to walk herself. She later departed this life in September 2003 on my sabbatical leave at Berkeley. I have since been burdened with an obligation to compile her works for AMIE.

Most of her works were photographed mainly in 2016. After my retirement in August 2017, My Love dedicated to Amie was published in November 2018. Two or more years have been devoted to reproducing works from their photographs.

I would like to express my gratitude to Amie’s three sisters, Kim H. Nugent, Yong Sook Kim and Jiyeon Kim