When we experience pain, it sticks with us. The greater the pain, the deeper the impression it leaves and the more it seeps into our psyche affecting our daily lives long after the initial infliction. In this interview, artist and curator Samantha Blumenfeld discusses her creative practice, how it has helped her to face and process inner trauma, as well as other aspects of her art.

Samantha Blumenfeld is an artist, curator, and art educator based in Seoul, South Korea.

BEN JON MILLER: You were doing a lot of art-journaling for awhile. Could you describe your approach to that process and what came from it? Is there a difference between the way you approach art-journaling and the way you approach creating in general?

SAMANTHA BLUMENFELD: At first I would try to art journal everyday, to make it a self-care habit like brushing your teeth. Mentally though, I’m really disorganized and have issues with executive functioning so I moved from doing it everyday to doing it when I most needed to. These situations arose because there was something specific I was simultaneously processing in therapy or I just felt overtaken by an overwhelming series of emotions. In dealing with my trauma, I lacked any means to express what had happened to me for so long, and rather than try to build up my vocabulary to explain it (I don’t believe the right words could ever truly exist) I took a more abstract approach. I would often do multiple entries in one sitting as I move between different states of expressing, reflecting, and acceptance of how I felt.

This process opened a lot of doors for me as far as what I was able to access from my own interior methodology, and from there is where a lot of the concepts and visual symbols in my recent work originated from. So maybe now when I’m working through something, I’ll make some expressive pieces and reflect on them until an image forms about what it means to me. This is what I base my paintings on.

Samantha and Miniprint co-founder Albert Che at their print studio and art space.

B: You recently started an art therapy support group at Miniprint Gallery (link) in Seongsu-dong, Seoul. If you’re comfortable sharing, could you say how art has helped you to heal--or positively change your relationship to--internal challenges?

S: Art journaling, even self-driven, has had a profound effect on my ability to heal. As I mentioned earlier, a great deal of my trauma was compounded by the fact that I was unable to express it, and further worsened by a lack of communal support. These drawings, paintings, poetry were not for anyone else but for me, and working this way taught me how to process without an audible voice offering support. I learned how to speak that way and open up to myself. It became less detrimental to have validation from outside about how bad it felt; I could feel and understand it intuitively. While I’ve always been able to sense imbalance and accurately pinpoint visceral discomfort, I can now express and heal those parts that ache and bleed. I feel much more occupied inside myself than I ever have before.

B: In a recent interview in the Korea Times (link), you mentioned the use of spontaneity in your work. What attracts you to the spontaneous approach of making? What comes from it?

S: When I was studying art, one my biggest issues was not lacking the means to express but knowing ultimately what it was I actually wanted to express. I had no solid conceptual basis for my work, and most of my ideas felt disingenuous. I always longed for the freedom to be able to build a visual narrative that meant something to me, and felt jealous of artists who worked this way early in their initial process.

“I was able to let go of trying to make ‘good art’ and could focus on making something true.”

It wasn’t until art journaling where I was able to let go of trying to make ‘good art’ and could focus on making something true. I learned to work intuitively with color, line, shape, form and finally subject. I now have a wide array of tools from which to work spontaneously, which has become an important step in my process.

B: How has your creative practice altered or added to your experience of life?

S: My creative practice has given me the ability to express and heal all the most wounded parts of me. It has also given me the means to reflect and treasure all the most important parts of me and my experience. I feel less afraid to feel how I feel or to share and open myself to others.

While recovery is not a straight line, and I know I’ll continue to face seemingly insurmountable challenges in the future, my goal has always been to be a more efficient person. That wording sounds strange and robotic, but what I mean is that I want to continue to grow and get better at what I feel passionately about and also increasingly work towards self-care that provides me with the independence of self-assurance.

B: Can you give an example of a creative work that has made a significant impression on your life and/or art practice?

S: It’s hard to think of a single specific piece of work that has had that kind of impression, because it’s impossible to get that type of alone time with any piece that isn’t then affected by everything else; art isn’t experienced in a vacuum. Some of the things that have influenced me especially in the way I’m working now are the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, ‘Antichrist’ by Lars von Trier, and ‘Enter the Void’ by Gaspar Noe; the books ‘Ways of Seeing’ by John Berger and ‘Man and his Symbols’ by Carl Jung (although I have a lot of issues with how dated a lot of elements of this thought process are;) and artworks by Marlene Dumas, Emily Carr, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, and you Ben Miller.

B: What helps you maintain your connection to creative ideas and inspiration? This could be a habit, an intention or motive, a material, a place, a person, a book, or anything else.

S: Being in a creative environment and working and being surrounded by other artists. Curating with Crazy Multiply means there are always new and amazing artistic contemporaries I’m learning about and having an opportunity to meet, and working with other artists and printers through Miniprint. If it wasn’t for this constantly maintained habitat of art and artists I think I would honestly struggle to continue to make art.

B: What kind of experiences would you like audiences to have through your work? This could be broadly open-ended or specifically intentioned.

S: Hearing thoughtful feedback from viewers has always been an interesting experiment for me. I enjoy either how much it reveals about me or the viewer in our dialogue. What I’d specifically like them to experience is that of being transported not to another place, but another frame of mind (or another mind altogether!)

B: Are there any projects you’re working on now, or would like to work on in the future, that are exciting or stimulating you? Could you describe the motivation behind one of them? Why are you drawn to it and where do you want to go with it?

S: There’s definitely a lot more paintings I want to make, but I’m also in the infant stages of putting together a book. I’ve always loved writing (in any language I’ve learned to write in) and at this point I’d like to push the limits of my ability to express the experiences that lack words. I started it when I felt like I had no other options in terms of what I was able to make, and I’m still experimenting. I’m not entirely sure where I want to go with it, either create it into an overarching allegory or a metaphysical journey into the core of my nameless female protagonist.

B: Are there any challenging aspects of your creative practice (or your life) that you enjoy or appreciate, despite the difficulty? How do you respond to those challenges when they arise?

S: I honestly don’t like the act of painting, despite painting being my chief method of expression. It just feels like labor as most of my final works aren’t process-based; there is one outcome I’m trying to achieve. The satisfaction of completing it though is worth the awful drudgery of its creation.

B: Have you had any life experiences that impacted or shifted your approach to art-making? If so, could you describe one of them and share how it affected you?

S: I majored in printmaking and minored in painting in college. I had hoped that also studying painting simultaneously would help me develop the concepts that I would then go on to make prints about, but it just wasn’t the case. There is a huge schism in my art between my painting and printmaking which was temporarily bridged by my time working in new media. After moving to Korea and being extremely limited in the type of art I could make, I began to work in new media and new art which finally allowed me the opportunity to take my mind off a lot of the small and insignificant decision-making that had obstructed my ability to make work until then. I learned so much about the type of art I wanted to make through that process, and those decisions impact my approach to both painting and printmaking. One of my goals is to unite these two disparate groups of work in the same spirit to how physicists attempt to unite General Relativity with Quantum Physics; they both work separately but the manner in which they work together is still unknown.

Below are links to Samantha's work and projects with which she is involved:

@roribleu - Samantha's Instagram page.
Crazy Multiply - A collective of curators who organize exhibitions and community events in South Korea.
Miniprint - A print studio and an art space offering classes, studio access, printing services, curated artist collaborations and art events. Located in Seoul, South Korea. Co-organized by Samantha Blumenfeld and fellow artist Albert Che. The classes they offer in Seoul include printmaking, drawing, and creative coping and can be found here (link).

On my blog, you can find more writings on art and alchemical thinking, interviews about creativity, psychologically-oriented reflections on tarot, and more. You can check out past posts in the categorized list below.

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Art
- Dec 19, 2016 Wakey Wakey, Inner Kiddo
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
- Aug 17, 2017 Put the Potatoes on Your Face
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
Interviews
- Feb 21, 2018 Artist Interview: Samantha Blumenfeld
- Mar 1, 2018 Artist Interview: Lawrence Blackman
- Apr 23, 2018 Interview: Yogi Ron Katwijk
- Jun 4, 2018 Artist Interview: Sally Nicholson
- Jul 18, 2018 Artist Interview: Kayle Karbowski
Magical Thinking
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
- Jan 15, 2017 Following Fear
- Feb 19, 2017 Why Does Heartache Happen?
- Jul 6, 2017 Nerves and Tutus
- Aug 7, 2017 Three Reasons to Destroy Yourself (Or Not)
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Jan 5, 2018 Chaos' Playground: Finding Gold in the Shitstorm
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Apr 16, 2018 Questions for Limitations
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Aug 23, 2018 Melting a Snowball of Misery
- Jun 21, 2019 White Peacocks, Constipation, and Emotional Liberation
- Aug 5, 2019 Celebrating Your Misery
- Dec 4, 2020 The Healing Voice: Wounds, Addiction, and Purgation
- May 18, 2023 Magick is a Sentient Entity: Using the Imagination to Co-Create with Magick
- Jun 21, 2023 Magick for Reshaping Life and Transmuting Trauma
Tarot
- Aug 26, 2017 Tarot as a Tool for Reality Construction
- Feb 28, 2018 Today's Tarot: The World is in the Seed
- Jun 27, 2019 Today's Tarot: Snot, Beauty, and Tea for Pain
- Aug 12, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Moon of Self-Loathing
- Aug 13, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Golden Devils Inside You
- Aug 18, 2019 Today's Tarot: Shifting Pain by Surrendering to It
- Aug 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #1: Why is the Present Moment So Much All the Time?
- Sep 3, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #2: Do abusers know they're being abusive, or is that just their sense of reality?
- Sep 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #3: Why can't I find more hours in a day?
- Oct 11, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #4: How long will it be until I have a new job?
- Oct 24, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #5: Why does my skin crawl with wonder and fascination as such important relationships in my life are connected by the eyes?