Imi Hwangbo received her M.F.A. in sculpture from Stanford University, where she studied with the Bay Area Expressionist Nathan Oliveira. Her current work is a series of constructed, three-dimensional drawings.  These drawings are made with translucent mylar that is printed, hand-cut, and layered in such quantity that sculptural forms are created.  This series of work is based on the decorative patterns and imagery from Korean wrappings cloths, called pojagi.  These four-cornered cloths, which are used for wrapping, carrying, or covering objects, are often decorated with geometric patterns and floral motifs. 

In Ms. Hwangbo’s artworks, these traditional patterns are reconfigured and expanded into space.  Light is used a medium to convey the image, with patterns gaining depth through the translucent layering of light and shadow. As art critic Lilly Wei has written: “Hwangbo’s geometric motifs and lacy botanicals are related to pojagi designs, filtered through a modernist syntax of diamonds, circles, and squares configured as infinitely expandable systems in which solids and voids are similarly important and mind and dream intertwine.”