In her studio in Brooklyn, she sighed at Kim in the morning. She wasn’t sure of her latest painting, a portrait of a woman with hairy eyes and sweeping dark hair.
“Because I don’t have a goal of what it should look like,” she said, “I spend time thinking:” What do I like about it, what I don’t like about it? “
The walls and shelves were lined with dozens of portrait variations. Mrs. Kim, a small 38 -year -old woman with her chin, began a series about two years ago, when she was acting on a long -term desire to paint, she decided to finish the picture every day. Without it possible, she created a huge amount of work. Some of them are to look this month in ‘Memory palace“Solo exhibition at the Nicola Vassell Gallery in Manhattan.
Yet she had doubts about her last canvas. “If he doesn’t sit with me, then it’s okay to destroy,” she said, “because it’s probably not good anyway.”
When Mrs. Kim does notarted, she works hard in her profession as a creative director at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Readers who don’t know her name are likely to be familiar with sharp, mood packaging she has designed for a number of books, including Sheil Heti’s “Pure color” and Michelle Zuner’s “Crying in H Mart.”
Since 2021, Mrs. Kim has also been the artistic director of the Paris revision. In this work she helped to rework the appearance of a 72 -year -old literary magazine and choose provocative works of art for his press edition such as oil painting Who is naked, with the exception of a few clear black tights.
“Everything is beautiful with on,” said Dierdre Shea, an industrial designer who knew Mrs. Kimová since the students were at the Maryland Institute College of Art. “And it’s not as if this intense effort for her.” I think he works very hard. But you know, I mean how creative it is – it’s very innate. ”
Other friends called her private and elusive. For Mrs. Kim, who was born in Seoul and grew up in South Korea and New Jersey, the reduction is just a part of work.
“It’s really about how to serve the book in the best way,” she said. “And a lot of time it means letting go of it.”
“It’s a cover on”
When she suggests a book, she tries to see her both a writer, as a reader. She said she usually reads it several times and tries to watch her intuition about scenes and metaphors that evoke its core.
When Mrs. Kim decided to design the envelope “Fresh complaint”, 2017 Collection of stories Author: Jeffrey Eugenides, a writer she admired for a long time, her desire impressed him first in his way, she said. The first picture she suggested, a red needle with the nail instead of the heel was not what Mr. Eugenides was in mind.
“I thought the mood he expressed was harder and contradictory than the mood of stories,” he said in -mail interview.
Mrs. Kim wrote an essay about her experience with Mr. Eugenides called “When your favorite writer doesn’t like your initial envelopes“She described how she returned to the drawing board after her early effort did not make the cut and forced to postpone her urge to dazzle. In the end she came up with something that did a trick.
“Her idea to print an illustration on the book itself and use a transparent jacket to complete and emphasize that it was smart and engaging,” Eugenides wrote about the final version. “I immediately liked it.”
In recent years, a clear series of colors and robust fonts have become recurrent features of contemporary books, the trend of writer Margot Boyer-Dry in 2019 called “BOLD AND BLOCKLY INSTAGRAME ERA OF BOOK Covers“If the late -substances’ packaging appears”look the same“This is because so many readers buy books online, where covers must read legally into the image of a miniature.
In Farrar, Straus and Giroux said Mrs. Kim, she was able to try them finer designs for A more literal, less commercial book books And the trust of her bosses in her. They are “really open to new ideas and things that haven’t imagined yet,” she said.
Suggested covers that are painters and drawn, spare and surrealist. Everyone may differ from each other, but many writers recognize Mrs. Kim’s sensitivity when she sees it.
“It has this strong instinct for beauty and balance and a distinctive picture,” Mrs. Heti said in an interview. “I often have these feelings about books – I love the cover – And then I turn it and it’s a cover on. ”
For “Pure Color”, Mrs. Kim and Mrs. Heti explored several different minimalist, black and white illustrations that the author felt that he could suit a book about a young woman whose spirit goes to the letter.
Then Mrs. Heti brought Mrs. Kim another idea: could she do something with Ellsworth Kelly’s lithography? Mrs. Heti saw a job – a Live Green Amoebic Form – in the lower Manhattan apartment of a friend, writer and artist Leanne Shapton.
Mrs. Kim got to work, sent a concept after the concept, some with a visible brush, or set off with contrasting shades. Their cooperation was so intense, said Mrs. Heti that Mrs. Kim appeared in her dream. They decided for Kelly’s original green shape with a mixture of black and gold text on Mrs. Kimová’s own script.
“I didn’t even know it was possible to feel about covering,” Mrs. Heti said.
“What will I paint?”
Mrs. Kim and her older brother had a peripathetic childhood – she was “complicated”, she said – she moved between South Korea and various cities in New Jersey. It grew up in the drawing and running track. She thought about becoming a doctor like her father, an orthopedic surgeon, but also admired her aunt, a painter.
When it was time to sort admission to college, she chose the Maryland Institute College of Art, but was still afraid to admit that she wanted to paint professionally, she said. Instead, she studied an illustration she had hoped to be more practical.
After graduation she overwhelmed and waited tables in Baltimor, as was the case at school. After assigning a freelance for Farrara, Straus and Giroux, she showed her a potential career journey, landing on an internship in Bloomsbury Publishing in New York.
When the designer Bloomsbury left full -time, Mrs. Kim was hired. After joining Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2015, she continued to hold similar contributions in other publishing houses. The annual list of the best books.
Her career turned in 2021, when Emily Stokes, who was then editor of the Paris revision, hired Mrs. Kim to revive the 72 -year -old literary magazine. In cooperation with designer Matt Willy, they scored the magazine cover lines and gave space to artists, including Stanley Whitney, Danielle Orchard and Rose wylie.
Mrs. Kim again made a Paris review “Feeling like a publication that people who care for visual art will want to read and admire,” Mrs. Stokes said.
Last September, Mrs Stokes and Mrs. Kim Painter Ann Craven invited to the roof of the magazine at the magazine Moon EN PLEIN-AIR. Mrs. Kim looked when she painted. “This is someone to do,” Mrs. Kim recalled.
Mrs. Kim said she decided to take painting because she “tired of watching how other people were brave”, including a former friend she encouraged to paint. Yet she wasn’t sure what her object would be.
“Because I spent some time working for other people, I was asked to think, okay, I want to paint, but what will I paint?” She said.
It was attracted to the portrait because “something felt really natural and right to paint the face.” But the portraits she began to paint almost all contain a female object whose look is not just behind the viewer, do not appear a real person. “I’m still watching it without thinking about what it means so much,” she said.
Sometimes she would publish a finished work on Instagram. This caught the attention of Matthew Higgs, the main curator of the non -profit artistic space White columnswhich is known discovery. In 2023 he invited Mrs. Kim to contribute to the work on the art fair.
“I saw her skill as an illustrator and as a designer – apparently she is just phenomenally talented when it comes to the craft of things,” Higgs said. “But I liked the painting a little bit of painting, and then inside – or behind it – struggle with, What does a person do with painting?”
Great night
Nowadays Mrs. Kim usually spends a few hours in the morning, when the light is best, perhaps listening to Willie Nelson or Bad Bunny before turning to her design work. Her nine -year -old rescue dog, Moon, is usually curled nearby.
When he does not work, he often does small memento for friends – as a miniature clay, complemented by a lock of her own hair for the tail that Mrs. Stokes once gave. She also organizes dinners that show her skills in the kitchen. Once she won the Baking Baking competition by creating a stunning pastry filled with a Korean short rib, a friend remembered. And although it can sometimes be seen at a journal party, it prefers a more intimate assembly.
“I’m not an event,” said a recent evening at the Nicola Vassell Gallery, where the crowd of associated crowd took over at her opening reception.
Mrs. Kim and the Moon welcomed her friends and colleagues.
“The paintings are traditionally achieved, with a brilliant brush work and the use of color,” said Mrs. Stokes. “But there’s something nervous about them.” The images show an unintelligence. ”
When the event decreased, Mrs. Kim took Uber with the group, including Mrs. Vassell and Mr. Higgs to the magnifying glass, the Italian restaurant in West Village. Mrs. Vassell picked up Mrs. Kim’s glass in the private canteen.
“I think everyone is sitting here in the cross -section of all the interesting paths he has issued,” said Mrs. Vassell. “And it is a reflection of how interesting it is like a human being.”
For a moment it seemed that Mrs. Kim could say a few words. But she got worse.