The Bayside Historical Society is pleased to present "Moon and Bloom," a group exhibition featuring four New York–based artists whose work draws on the enduring symbolism of the moon and the natural world. For centuries, the moon, flowers, and seasonal landscapes have been central motifs in East Asian art — symbols of beauty, contemplation, renewal, and the rhythms of nature. Rooted in these traditions yet shaped by contemporary sensibilities, each artist offers a distinct interpretation across painting, textile, and mixed media.

Across the four bodies of work, a single subject takes on many forms. A moon jar becomes a luminous meditation on light and touch; lotus ponds and peony blossoms carry centuries-old wishes for blessing and longevity; nine panels of indigo textile shift and rearrange like the phases of the moon; and an ecliptic moon glows where the natural and urban worlds meet. Presented in dialogue, the works move between stillness and abundance, tradition and reinvention — transforming the gallery into a contemplative garden where the cycles of nature and human imagination quietly converge.

The Exhibition Schedule

• Opening Date: Tuesday, August 4, 2026, 10:00 AM

• Opening Reception & Demo: Saturday, August 8, 12:00–4:00 PM — enjoy light refreshments and an opportunity to meet the artists.

• Artist-in-residence hours: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 10:00 AM–3:00 PM — Jiae Kim will be painting minhwa on-site in an open studio setting; visitors are welcome to observe and ask questions.

• Closing Date: Friday, August 14, 2026, 3:00 PM

• Admission: Free ($5 suggested donation)

About the Artists

Beautiful_Soul

Beautiful_Soul is a Korean contemporary artist and meditator whose practice gives visual form to the evolution of consciousness. She began her artistic journey roughly fifteen years ago with drawing, exploring the depth of watercolor and oil before turning, for a period, to inner reflection and text-based work. After years of daily meditation and philosophical inquiry, she returned to the brush to expand her thinking within contemporary art. Influenced by a minimalist way of life and the geometric clarity of the Bauhaus, her work distills a complex world down to its essentials, visualizing quiet order, light, and a sense of positive energy.

In Moon and Bloom, she approaches the moon jar (dal hangari) — the iconic form of Korean white porcelain — as a meditative subject. The vessel’s generous, imperfect sphere has long resembled a full moon and embodied humility, emptiness, and inner grace. Rather than working in ceramic, Beautiful_Soul paints the moon jar on canvas, reworking its surface with iridescent crystal mosaics, layered acrylic glazes, pearl beadwork, and floral appliqué. Her four works form a coherent suite that traces a quiet emotional spectrum from luminous to tender, turning the vessel into an evocative language of light, touch, and reflection.

Jiae Kim

Jiae Kim is a minhwa (Korean folk painting) artist based in Bayside, Queens. Working in the late-Joseon folk painting tradition, she uses traditional materials and methods — ground mineral and shell pigments (bunchae) bound with hide glue on handmade Korean mulberry paper (hanji). Her motifs — lotus, peony, camellia, mandarin ducks, and ornamental pattern — were long believed to invite prosperity, longevity, and happiness into the home, and her work carries minhwa’s traditional functions of blessing and protection into the life of the Korean diaspora in Queens. She practices in the Jinil Minhwa lineage under Master Hyun Joo Cho, has received Honorable Mentions in the Korean Minhwa Contest (2024 and 2025), and leads free bilingual community minhwa workshops as lead artist of the K-Color Link collective.

For Moon and Bloom, she presents five works that range across her current practice: a large lotus-and-mandarin-duck composition in the classical yeonhwado tradition; a peony tree in the morando style; an intimate camellia branch; a close study of lotus leaves and bud; and a phoenix-pattern wrapping cloth (bonghwangmun inmunbo) that draws on the layered visual language of bojagi and dancheong pattern. Faithful to traditional method yet contemporary in spirit, the selection reads as a small garden of the symbolic world the tradition has carried into our time.

Dani Song

Dani Song is a New York–based interdisciplinary artist working across painting, sculpture, textile art, performance, and community art practice. Born in Seoul, she immigrated to the United States with her family in the 1980s and later settled in New York. Rooted in traditional craft techniques, her work explores material sustainability, cultural identity, and the rich social and cultural fabric of Queens’ diverse communities.

Inspired by the moon’s ever-changing phases, Song presents an abstract textile work made with the Japanese stencil-dyeing technique katazome. Composed of nine indigo-dyed panels, each patterned with arcs and semicircles, the piece is designed to transform: by rotating and rearranging the panels, the composition can generate thousands of variations, reflecting the moon’s shifting forms and the endless possibilities of perception.

Makoto Kishino

Makoto Kishino is a painter and architectural designer originally from Tokyo, Japan, and based in New York City. He studied drawing and painting in Tokyo before pursuing fine art in New York, where he expanded into abstract and conceptual practice and worked as a studio assistant to artists including Takashi Murakami, Lucio Pozzi, Yukinori Yanagi, and Takeshi Kawashima. He later studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and now works on major public architecture and infrastructure projects in New York City. Bridging painting, design, and architecture, his work reflects on perception, memory, and the relationship between the built environment, nature, and contemporary urban life.

In his mixed-media paintings for Moon and Bloom, the ecliptic moon becomes a meeting point between the natural and urban worlds. Fragments of discarded plastics, bottle caps, and other found materials are embedded within atmospheric layers of paint, suggesting the fleeting cycles of human consumption against the enduring rhythms of nature. Echoing the seasonal skies of traditional Japanese woodblock prints, these works weave together symbolic imagery, material memory, and poetic narrative.