CHAMPAIGN — As the Boneyard Arts Festival approaches, a striking image of a multicolored bull on a bright yellow background has started popping up around town.
It’s this year’s Signature Image: Yeong Choi’s Life-Bull_8.
For Choi, being the Signature Artist represents being accepted into the local community.
“As an immigrant, the language barrier puts me very outside and not included in the community,” Choi said. “This last year, when I met some people in the Boneyard festival, they were so good to me.”
Choi has been an artist for a long time; she went to art school in Korea before coming to the U.S. as a transfer student to learn English.
She met her husband at the University of Illinois and moved to the States full time to live with him.
Once they had kids, Choi was too busy taking care of them to put much time into painting or drawing, so she has only been back to doing art full time for the last seven years or so.
In some ways, the time away made it easier for her to express herself in her work.
“When I was in art school … critiques made me very nervous and anxious doing the painting. I’m the person who naturally just paints and draws without any thinking,” Choi said.
The knowledge of incoming critiques made it difficult for Choi to paint naturally because she was too worried about what the reaction would be.
“Taking care of the house and things like that, that was a very simple life for me. I think a simple life made me purified more,” Choi said. “‘Who am I?’ Identity — I could focus more on that part.”
Much of Choi’s work is abstract, featuring fine lines that dance over a wash of color or vibrant overlapping shapes.
The Life-Bull series (as well as other pieces featuring bulls that aren’t labeled as part of the series) is an exception, veering more into impressionism.
Those bold lines and blends of color are still present, but they take the shape of bulls with curving, sharp horns.
Choi said her art, as a whole, seeks to show glimpses of truths about life.
“I was just attracted by the bull’s features. There’s a strength and then at the same time I could feel a kind of serenity inside of it,” Choi said. “The bull has become a symbol of strength, but at the same time, the burden of people.”
She first started featuring the bull in her art around five years ago.
The bull is also a self portrait of Choi, in a way, partly inspired by her Christianity.
“That’s why the bull’s position and the movement is getting wild,” she said. “When I read the Bible and when I’m thinking about God — I don’t know. I think I’m struggling every day between myself and my beliefs. The bull series comes from that.”
Choi has found that her art has become more reflective of herself and her personality, rather than featuring things or ideas she is interested in.
Four of her pieces featuring the bull are on display at 301 N. Neil St., which used to be Destihl’s Champaign location, alongside works by many other artists involved in the Boneyard Arts Festival.
The former restaurant has been transformed into an art gallery, using what used to be dining booths as “stalls” for different artists’ work.
The festival also includes dozens of other art installations and performances across Champaign-Urbana this Friday through Sunday, plus opportunities to purchase art or participate in workshops to make one’s own.
The full schedule is available on the 40 North website, but the gallery at 301 N. Neil St. will be open 4 to 9 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and 12 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.
