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Writing Tutor for Artists
미술 작가, 기관들을 위한 영어 과외 및 글쓰기 서비스 입니다. 아티스트 스테이트먼트, 프레젠테이션, 학교 지원서, 그랜트 지원서, 영어 인터뷰 연습, 전시 설명글(개인, 갤러리, 미술관) 등을 주로 하고 있습니다. 프랭크 몬테손티는 현재 미국 네셔널 대학교에서 영어 글쓰기와 문예창작 교수로 재직중이고 두권의 시집과 단편소설집등을 출간한 작가 입니다. 영어권 국가에서 활동하시면서 수준 높은 글쓰기가 필요하신 분들, 영어 발표시 영어 연습 및 스크립트를 작성 하시고 싶은 분들, 아티스트 스테이트먼트 확인 및 재 작성을 원하시는 작가분들을 위한 서비스 입니다. 글쓰기의 수준 향상을 위한 첨삭 서비스로, 아이디어가 완성 되지 않은 글 혹은 어떻게 표현 해야 할지 헷갈리는 글을 향상 시키는 방법으로 수업이 진행 되며, 영어로 소통 하셔야 하고. 한국어 서비스가 필요한 경우 추가의 비용이 발생합니다.
I provide translation and collaborative writing services primarily for Korean artists or art institutions who need thoughtful, correct, and persuasive written English.
I focus on:
- Artist statements
- Art presentations
- Art school applications
- Grant applications
- Art show descriptions (for individuals, galleries, or museums)
Lessons are conducted synchronously on Zoom.
About Me:
I am a full professor of rhetoric and creative writing at National University. I have published two full-length books of poetry, two chapbooks, and short stories in many literary journals. You may see more about me at www.frankmontesonti.com. I have worked extensively with American and Korean artists to draft and polish art writing. My wife is the Korean Ceramic artist, Yehrim Lee, so I have much experience producing the many writing genres necessary for a working artist.
Rates:
Most projects are 120,000 Won per hour or $90 USD.
(If the work requires Yehrim to do an initial translation from Korean) then the rate is 230,000won or $180 USD per hour.
If you are in Korea, we have a Korean bank account. If you are a Korean institution, we are set up as a business in Korea, and we can supply an invoice. If in the US, we have Zelle, Paypal, or Venmo.
Contact:
If interested, please feel free to email me at frank.montesonti@gmail.com. Or, if you prefer to query in Korean, you may email my wife, Yehrim Lee, leeyehrim328@gmail.com
Examples:
Artist Statement:
Yeh Rim Lee: Bridges Across an Integrative Sea of Acculturation
I build bridges. I build bridges between East and West, between decorative and functional, and between the eternal and the ephemeral. The bridges I build are suspension bridges. They suspend (often in the air) decay, ambiguity, and sensuality—the taut, fibrous stings of emotional labor that welcome the viewer across the chasm from one side to the other. Through colors and glaze, I explore luxury and decadence with surfaces that crystallize, facet, fragment, stylize, sharpen, distort, blur and cause noise. Dynamic ceramic surfaces embody the complexities and fragmentation of individual reflections of identity and suspend them over the integrative sea of acculturation.
While building bridges, I am not immune from the anxieties of the lands on either side. I find a metaphor for my process in the obsessive repetitions of late-stage capitalism and consumerism. I excessively fire and re-fire, introducing a different glaze each cycle, only stopping when the material starts to crack and warp to the point of near collapse. Even after firing, the constant layering continues until a “vibrancy of too muchness” occurs: pink on sweet sweaty blues, narcissistic yellows on avaricious greens. This tide of colors is then flooded with the addition of saturated resins, fibers, and papers—the flotsam and jetsam of the emotional sea. I digitally print acrylic film with patterns and layers of color that evoke the heat of wanting to pursue. Wet forms and dripping surfaces embody ravenous consumption, visual beauty, and physical pleasure.
As I bridge these seas, I have a foot on two shores. I reflect on my upbringing in Korea. My mother made ceramic work while I was in her womb. My father is an Onggi potter, and from him, I learned how difficult an artist’s labor can be. In my ceramic studies in Jingdezhen, China, I developed a keen sense of the collective nature of East Asian culture, tradition, and history. This group awareness was challenged when confronted with American individualism. Through this clash of borderlands within myself, I was able to imagine new bridges in my work that helped me negotiate my new identities. Yet, some parts of me always feel rooted. The physical movement of creation becomes a meditation through repetition, a kinesthetic voice that satisfies me more than anything else. Touch is a documentation of my expression. I try not to hesitate, working towards a process that is intuitive, fast, and confident. The movements I embody are aspects of the Korean Ceramic tradition that are deeply ingrained in my bones. While Korean ceramic traditions were typically patriarchal, my forms subvert masculine traditions within this legacy and re-interpret them with feminine possibilities.
Work is not the goal of my life; it is meaningful movement. I want people to travel across my bridges as I do, bringing their own languages and cultural memories on voyages that span the bodies of water between us, with the hope that in the middle we might share moments of awareness, empathy, and our shared human yearnings.
The following example is a question from the USA Artist Grant Application:
What motivates your artistic practice? Please describe the intention behind your work—no more than 3500 characters (500 words) *
To me, craft is about more than product: it is meaningful movement. Much of my work stems from daily practice. I often develop work organically, following a series of movements that produce new forms. I let the work discover itself and suggest its next development and material. I coil-build my sculptures to allow for difficult angles, shapes, and scale, but also because coiling and pinching is vital movement. I chose the title Folding In for one of my series not just because it looks like the sculptures are folding in on themselves, but also because the term “folding in” contains connotations of working materials together to make something new.
Themes of melding often arise in my work because of the cultural borderlands I must explore being a first-generation immigrant. My work isn’t overtly rhetorical, but it certainly works through the divides I feel in myself—divides between the masculine and feminine, between East and West, between the eternal and the ephemeral. If all my identities feel up in the air, I build in the air. In my installation work, I suspend ceramic sculpture, connecting air to earth with string and paper. I find excitement in movement in small spaces and in large.
I’m also interested in what happens when process goes on overdrive. Much of my work explores the idea of decadence and over-abundance, a commentary on contemporary consumer culture, like in my installation Shopping Spree, which I imagined as the excessive wrapping and packaging of products erupting out of itself into space. I excessively fire and re-fire, introducing a different glaze each cycle, only stopping when the material starts to crack and warp to the point of near collapse. Even after firing, the constant layering continues until I achieve a “vibrancy of too muchness” like in my series Candy Angle where bright colors move over difficult geometry—pink on sweet sweaty blues, narcissistic yellows on avaricious greens.
Even functional items are rolled in decadent gesture. They can be functional, yes, but they often beg the question of the line between the decorative and functional. My Money Chair series, a collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, re-interprets the Chinese garden stool in contemporary aesthetics. The traditional shape of the stool bends and flares into sculptural gesture while layered glaze explores contemporary notions of luxury with surfaces that crystallize, facet, fragment, and stylize.
My craft practice is all about meaningful movement. I have journeyed across an ocean and journeyed through my artistic practice. I have embraced my craft as a lifestyle and way of being. I am always anticipating the next move, the next project, the next form of my art and myself.
Frank Montesonti 