Image Making IV: Dust & Breath
by Rev. Woong-Sik (Timothy) Chon
Curated by Madeline Drewes
Genesis teaches us that we are formed of the dust of the earth and the breath of God. These two elements hold the tension of human existence at the heart of this exhibition. Dust grounds us in the fragility of the material world; our bodies are finite and earthly. Yet the breath of life speaks to the divine spark that animates and sustains us, orienting us toward the truth of our being and the hope of the everlasting.
Each portrait in this exhibition incorporates charcoal, a medium uniquely suited to explore that tension. Charcoal is both dust and breath: friable, the residue of fire, yet capable of giving life to memory in strokes of shadow and light. More than other materials, charcoal is a medium that breathes and can animate. Treating charcoal as a sculptural medium, Rev. Chon models the movement of life through birth, death, resurrection, and to life beyond.
Here, time collapses. Through charcoal, acrylic, and oil paint, Rev. Chon folds time into a single moment. The past presses into the present, the present opens toward the future, and all converge in Christ, who gathers mortality and eternity into Himself. These works bear witness to family and faith, rooting personal memory within a larger story of redemption in the family of Christ.
Through the cross, family is not only a bond of the present but a chain linking generations, held together through Christ. This bond extends both horizontally and vertically: backward and forward through time, and outward toward all of God’s children, weaving us together as one. And as one, we are called to bear one another’s burdens, to mourn together, and to rejoice together in the life to come. Fragile yet enduring, personal yet communal, these portraits reveal how love carries across time, gathering us into the body of Christ where loss is transformed and life is renewed.
As viewers, we are not outside this story. We are invited into Rev. Chon’s work in unexpected ways. We are mirrored in plexiglass, tracked by a mother’s gaze, embraced in the rhythm of breath. We are reminded that we are dust together, yet held by breath. Within that tension, new life waits to break forth.