Seasons in Los Angeles don’t adapt to the demand for Christmas standards, so people try really hard to make it happen. My grandma told me that it snowed in East LA one year during the holidays, which is kind of a Christmas miracle here.

My family is both Japanese and Mexican American. This led me to a foggy understanding as to what our family’s dedication was during this time of the year–so foggy that the holiday escaped us. It wasn’t a big deal, but what came afterwards was the only way of celebration for our Japanese-side, making ozoni on New Year’s day.

Ozoni is a traditional New Year’s soup that has varying recipes amongst each family, but what is most important is the mochi that sits inside the warm clear broth. Each year, I would peer into the ceramic bowl made by my dad, and see our ceiling fan in the reflection of the broth, in a way connecting to the stretchy mochi. The ceiling fan refracting light into the bowl, the fan blades slicing through the air, and the holidays imprinting their christmas-y colors, all suggested that maybe we were ingesting all of these things at once, or they were actually all the same. Made using the nerikomi technique, this ornament is a representation of a ʳᵉᶠʳᵃᶜᵗᵉᵈ mochi. It has absorbed and transformed its initial surrounding elements into the irregular, soft and circular, hand crafted mochi shape.

Anais Franco is the creator of studio sachi. The two intermingle – creating ideas of looping that manifest into ceramic design objects. For Franco, looping, persistence, and cycles are modes of thinking that help piece ideas together. As a way of introducing image-making and storytelling, Franco uses motifs and patterns to transform symbols into site specific meaning.

One year in kindergarten, perhaps a week or two before Christmas, my mom and I stopped by a toy store in the neighborhood. What caught my eyes was a figurine of a Flying Nimbus, a cloud that the main character from Dragonball Z rides to fly around. We left the store without buying it. A few days later in kindergarten, Santa Claus gave all the students presents and when I unwrapped mine, I was extremely surprised that he knew exactly what I wanted – the Flying Nimbus.

This kind of experience gets engraved in your brain as you grow up especially because when you recall the memory, you interpret it in a completely different way and emotional layers begin to accumulate. Years after the event, I had an aha moment realizing that it was actually my mom who went back to the toy store, bought the Flying Nimbus, and handed it over to the teacher. Knowing that my mom was someone who rarely bought anything for herself, the memory became a symbol of her love and sacrifice.

Working as a fabricator by day and an artist all other times, I cannot help but to think deeply about the physical labor that exists in our lives – especially the labor that my mom put into our family. Without proper recognition, her work was trivialized by society as “good parenting” or “good assistance to her husband.” The Flying Nimbus is made of hardwood sawdust that I have been collecting at work. In other words, the work has been made from a byproduct of my labor and time. As you burn this incense, I invite you to think about the existence of labor in your and your loved ones’ lives and to recognize that labor. Our labor deserves recognition.

Jinseok Choi is an interdisciplinary artist who activates our time and political surroundings by researching historical and cultural context and weaving seemingly unrelated issues via sculpture, installation, performance, and video. Recently, he has been working with life situations as conceptual materials that prompt him to transform the unavoidable byproducts of fabrication into something that is constructive and breathable.

The first moment when I realized Santa was not real was on a Christmas eve, late at night. My mom was packing our siblings’ presents and the noisy sound of the wrapping paper woke me up. Come Christmas day, I noticed the letters “from Santa” written on our gifts in my mom’s handwriting. This validated my doubt of Santa’s existence and yet at the same time, it aroused new curiosities. I am interested in the pseudonym aspect of this “from Santa.” When parents write “from Santa” on a gift, which language do they choose to write in and why? Do they practice fonts to make it more believable?

Jisoo Chung is a Los Angeles and Seoul based multimedia artist working through video and installation. Her work excavates constructed language in quotidian technology and objects. Failures of language such as mistranslation and auto-correction errors serve as motifs in her work.

Growing up, we never instilled any Christmas traditions that were particular to just our family. We did everything that was stereotypical to what any given family in the US would do during the holidays – put up a tree, decorate the house with Christmas ornaments, and prepare gifts. Nothing more or nothing less. But what did make this occasion special was that regardless of how far everyone was from our parents’ home, my siblings and I all gathered and spent time with each other. There was a bell that was hung on the door of my parents’ place, and every time someone arrived, the bell sounded.

‘Moa’ meaning to gather in Korea, the Moa Bell is an object inspired by the act of intentional gathering. While relationships do in fact ebb and flow, the bell brings attention to beginnings and endings of the moments we spend with our loved ones and reminds us to intentionally make time for these cherished relationships.

Julia Chai explores making practical and functional objects with sculptural influence. She is drawn to the life cycles that exist within nature – particularly the ocean, her korean heritage, the act of preparing and harvesting food from farm to table, and the relationships that ebb and flow in her life.

Growing up, Christmas was the ‘best’ holiday. I enjoyed the notion of exchanging gifts with loved ones. The surprise of finding gifts in the living room on Christmas morning, whether Santa Claus is real or not, was a thrilling moment. One Christmas, I woke up to a dino set that transformed into a robot. (The most memorable would be the red power ranger trex.) Wee Dino Pots are tiny ceramic forms of dinosaurs intended to remind you of their long lost legend of roaming the Earth. As a preschooler, I used to steal little dinosaurs from my school. That’s how attracted I was to dinosaurs. To this day, I believe the Natural History Museum has the best sculptures. So in a way, the Wee Dino Pots are the result of two of my favorites combined – the best holiday and the best creature. I hope this work can be a useful and playful gift for someone.

Richard Nam is an LA based interdisciplinary artist who primarily works within the mediums of ceramics, drawing, painting, and printmaking. Interested in various narratives of reality and surreality, his work portrays ›a deep care about human social life and the urban and ecological environments.

In Mandarin, ‘Christmas Eve’ translates to Ping’anye (平安夜, the evening of peace and safety), which sounds similar to ‘pingguo’ meaning apple. In recent years, younger people in China began gifting apples on Christmas Eve. I remember the boys in my undergrad used to stand outside the classrooms with boxes of over-packaged apples, gifting them to the girls. Since middle school, I have developed a habit of eating an apple each day and I rarely leave the grocery store without purchasing any apples. However, over the years, I would stop buying apples around Christmas time, as I know I would receive them as gifts. I was prepared to take advantage of that.

Apples are never just the sweet juicy fruit from trees – they carry too many meanings and symbols. For me, this new Christmas tradition is rather a lovely one, regardless of how crazy their price might be during Christmas time, as it is always nice to have some peace and safety.

Ruoyi Shi is an interdisciplinary artist working with objects, writings, performances, and video installations. Inspired by folklore, oral history, mythology, and personal memory, she combines humor and fiction to construct her own poetic narratives. Through her practice, Ruoyi plays a world-building game with the figures and creatures she invents and invites the audience to participate in her alternative reality.

I spent most of my childhood going to church especially during Christmas time. And sad to say, the Korean Christian church has advocated queerphobic agendas strongly and actively. When you realize that you are a target among the group you belong, coping mechanisms kick in – like losing one’s visual or perceptive senses. I would like to gestaltzerfall you with this short tongue twister. QUIET QUEER CHOIR. If you’re with me, let’s say it. Let’s say it, and let’s look after our queer neighbors this Christmas.

Woohee Cho is a visual artist based in Los Angeles, working primarily with video installation and performance. The key theme of his work is self-identification. He is a gay who grew up in a religious, conservative middle-class Korean family. The aim of his work, which stems from his personal experiences, is to expose and queer the structural irony of patriarchal, heterosexual norms.