About

Paper is my brush. I make art from Hanji, Korean mulberry paper, which I dye by hand. I layer the paper, scratch and pull its fibers, and shape it, joining it with rice paste glue. There is no paint or pen in my work. Newer pieces also include carved wood blocks and sculptures covered in textured paper.

I was born in Korea, moved to the United States in 1995, and went back to Korea in 2016 to study with a Hanji master. I live and work in Portland, Oregon.

Artist statement

Each piece begins with something I feel strongly about. For my wildlife work, I choose an animal that speaks to me. A mother and her young remind me of my own love for my children. A small bird or an owl makes me think about how much their needs are like ours: we all need a safe place to survive and protection to thrive, on an earth we take care of.

My other series grow the same way. City for the People started with a memory of riding in a taxi through Seoul, looking up at towering buildings and feeling very small. These sculptures imagine the opposite: cities shaped around the people who live in them. Nature's Layers is built from many stacked sheets of dyed paper, much the way the land itself forms in layers. Mermaid's Playground is about play and curiosity, and the joy of remembering how it felt to be a child. My portraits of elders and children came from people who had very little, yet still carried wisdom, peace and innocence.

A single piece can take up to 200 hours. I dye the paper until the color is right and make my own tools when what I need doesn't exist. I keep challenging myself to find out what else paper can do, inventing new textures and taking it off the wall into sculpture. Then comes the slow, focused work of scratching, pulling and shaping the paper fibers before they go onto a panel or a carved wood form. During those long hours, I become completely absorbed in what I'm making. In the end, I hope a piece gives someone a short break from a busy day, or a quiet moment of hope.

My work has been shown in the Society of Animal Artists Annual Exhibition, CraftForms at the Wayne Art Center, the Wichita National All Craft Media Exhibition, and the International Paper Art Biennale in Shanghai, China. I also created three commissioned pieces for Stanford Children's Hospital.

Texture and Color Studies

Exhibitions and Commissions

2025Wichita National All Craft Media Exhibition, Mark Arts, Kansas

202575th A•ONE, Silvermine Arts Center, Connecticut

2024Stanford Children’s Hospital, three commissioned works

2022–23Society of Animal Artists 62nd Annual Exhibition (Redding, CA; Oradell, NJ; Bolivar, MO)

2022David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, Wildlife Artist of the Year 2022, United Kingdom

2022Craft Boston Animal Attraction, Society of Craft (online)

2021–22The Kingdom, Midland Center for the Arts, Michigan

2021Brand 49th Annual National Juried Exhibition, Glendale, CA

2020Conversation with Paper, Gallery Fritz, Santa Fe, NM

2019–20CraftForms, Wayne Art Center, Pennsylvania

2019–20Fengxian Museum International Paper Art Biennial, Shanghai, China

2019Brand 47 Works on Paper Juried Exhibition, Glendale, CA

2019Asia Pacific Cultural Center, Washington

Yun Gee Bradley in her Portland studio

Follow my work on Instagram: @yungeebradleyart