Fullness & Emptiness

Friday, March 7th - Saturday, April 12th, 2025

First Friday Reception: March 7th, 5:00-7:30pm

Fullness & Emptiness is the rhythm of life; a heartbeat is the sound of it, the tides are the creation of it, human experience is the living of it, and art is the translation of it. Our worlds do the dance between the two and our feelings and emotions go with that rhythm. It is the Yin and yang of being human. Fullness and emptiness are two sides of the same coin, and one cannot exist without the other. You must empty in order to fill, and fill in order to empty.

This exhibition features the artwork of Susie Wilson, Soo Choi, and Heejin Lee, three incredible local artists including our very own Santa Cruz Art League Exhibitions Curator.

“For me personally as an artist, this is a very familiar concept as I create and bring my work to fruition. At first I am full (often to bursting!) with an idea, a concept, often a vision. The ideas are mutating, changing and evolving and growing until I simply have to pour them out onto the ‘canvas’. This is a time of urgency for me when I simply can hardly bear to stop, and I am almost obsessed with being in the creative space.. it can continue for many days or weeks.  All of this focus is difficult to relinquish once the work is ‘complete’, (at whatever state completeness is reached!). This is when I feel empty; not in the negative way of 'the void', but more like the satisfied way of the creation and release from my inner self to the outside world.

I imagine everyone, certainly every creative being, experiences this 'fullness /emptiness’ in a very unique and personal way and it is this very truth to which this exhibition is dedicated; the ability for art to manifest in as many ways as there are artists and for not one to be any obstacle to the others. A truly connected collaboration of work, each aspect of which has room to support the rest. It’s message, for me at least, is that art and the happily tormented souls who produce it, can provide an example of how diverse and eclectic creations are really all part of a shared vision of the world; all of the elements benefit from sharing space in harmony, rather than in any separate or conflicted environment.”

-Susie Wilson

About the Artists

Susie Wilson

Originally from the UK, I spent the early years of my life traveling extensively in Europe, loving to experience other cultures and traditions. Sweden, Spain, France, Holland, Malta, Portugal.. travel always excited me and helped feed my visual curiosity. I eventually moved permanently to the US in 1991. Art has always been my passion and the great calling for my life. I simply do not remember a time when I did not identify as 'an artist'!

Straight from high school, I attended the Norfolk Institute of Art and Design in the UK, and initially studied for a degree in printmaking & typography which led to an early career as a commercial photographer. Several years later, after having my children, I returned to school obtaining credentials to teach while I studied Graphic Design Illustration. At this time I began working part time as a teacher of life drawing while I completed my studies.

When I arrived in the US,  Illustration became the foundation for my business Pommegraphis which offered both fine art and commercial illustration services. Over the past five or six years, I have really enjoyed building several successful figurative and still life drawing classes through the Santa Cruz Art League, and continue to teach many private classes at my studio in Santa Cruz.

Soo Choi

I immigrated to America in 1982, and some forty years has passed since building a new life and home here. The time provided me flesh and blood to my sticks and bones life and is now projected entirely and perfectly in my work. My work was created amidst cycles of hardship and despair but the occasional warm rays of the sun and the rejuvenating wind often soothed and blew on my soul, allowing me to live and so I continue to live.

One day putting down the work that sustained our lives and turning a painful corner of life’s trials, I discovered the existence of green hills, blinding sunlight and a silver river in the distance. A group of birds in trees that seemed to be enjoying the breeze and the countless leaves scattering and scattered on the fields. Being a part of the scene on that field, I realized and rediscovered the abundant beauty that was always there.

My premature intent, explanation aside, I don’t want to disrupt all the beauty that has always been. If there is one intent that is possible to me, it is to enhance and expose all that is beautiful as they exist. Art is not created by me. Through my life, borrowing my hand, beauty in life and nature is revealed to its fullest. Revealing the essence is like seeing the wind by watching the swaying trees and translating that abstract, invisible concept for the seeing eye to be convinced of its existence.
Now I understand that I am separated, freed from my artwork. In order to realize the greatest freedom to be myself, I hope to disregard art criticisms, prejudices that people express. I further hope to venture out of the studio more often to engage in active dialogue with people.