Trimet’s 2024 AAPI month bus wrap was informed by the Southeast/East Asian myth, Dragon Gate, of the carp’s waterfall ascension and metamorphosis into dragon form. I found symmetry between my mother's expatriation from South Korea to America and the key themes from the myth: obstacles, perseverance, bravery, and reinvention. In The Odyssey of the Dragon, the carp's transformation is a mode of adaptation; the scales remind of where the carp began, but the decision to make the journey has forever changed the once fish. Becoming the dragon, brings an onset of new challenges that parallels the complexity of my mother’s experience. In my mother, I see the dragon. This is for her.
For more on this bus wrap, check out Trimet's Wrap Archive.

everywhen is an installation that explores dreams through family bond. Combining analogue and digital modes of making–ink drawings, digitized hi8 tapes, risograph animation, printmaking, projection mapping, video and sound–this multimedia project considers circular time and familial memory. The installation conjures the interior worlds of grief and gratitude, the viewer in a porous space immersing where the dream slips between night and day.

everywhen installation
entry wall
PNCA Mediatechque
2023

mom - time
risograph animation
bright red + metallic gold + HD black

perfect time
animation contact sheet

dad - time
risograph animation
lake + metallic gold + steel

mom
risograph animation
riso federal blue + flo pink + sunflower

dad
risograph animation
riso federal blue + flo pink + sunflower

making of The Morning Glory

concept sketch

contact sheet

plan

final result
funded by




ilish bath’s first commissioned illustration was her elementary school’s yearly Christmas card. Since then her commissions range from album covers, to city bus wraps that honor Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander cultures and diasporas. Research drives both her commissioned and personal work. Her multimedia installation, everywhen, combines ink drawings, digitized hi8 tapes, risograph animation, and projection mapping, to explore circular time, dreams, familial memory and bond. everywhen earned her both the Thesis Show and Writing awards at Pacific Northwest College of Art, and a RACC Project Grant following graduation (2023). Bath is based in Portland, Oregon, printing and teaching at the collectively operated BIPOC risograph press nun studios, illustrating, and assisting in a wide range of art, production, exhibition, and mural services—applying a lifelong drawing practice and persistent desire to learn within community contexts.