In 2022, while BTS began their military chapter, I made a promise to myself through the ARMY Glow Up campaign: if I was going to wait, I would not simply wait. I would learn something, make something, nurture a skill, and keep my creative fire alive.
That was how this cyanotype began with Indigo, with Namjoon’s Wild Flower, and with my own curiosity about turning light, plants, and chemistry into an image. The first print experimental. Then came a digital reproduction with the help of Sin So. I then framed a version of it and eventually I was able to write a poem for it: “a flower does not bloom for beauty alone / it is for bearing fruit / a truth laden with thorns.” I was simply making, learning, and playing through a season of waiting, loss, grief and holding on. I didn’t know where else the work would go.
And now, look. 
@atta_joy_ca an ARMY in San Francisco noticed my cyanotype prints and has shared the newest reproduction of this particular print, Wild Flower. And it was reprinted with my permission, as part of the gift bags prepared for the press preview of RM’s exhibition at the San Francisco Musuem of Modern Art next month. From a little cyanotype experiment in the Philippines to San Francisco. Wow. This is what ARMY Glow Up means to me. We don’t just wait for our artists to return. We use the waiting to become more capable of making the things we dream of making.
BTS were growing in their own chapter. So was I. So were we.
This one found its way to San Francisco. And at RM’s curated art exhibit at SFMOMA, no less. Who knows where the next one will go? 
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