Pachinko is an illustration based on the familial boarding house from the novel Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee. Pachinko makes the fourth print in Laurenleely’s series Between The Lines, a collection of illustrations based on places set within fictional novels.

Set in Yeongdo in South Korea in 1911, the familial boarding house was a refuge for fishermen and travellers, belonging to a family of modesty in a time of unrest. The boarding house was the starting point of the story that would span generations following the family, who were learning what their identity meant to them when uprooted from their home, their resilience, and their pursuit of belonging in an unfamiliar place.

Drawing each space so descriptively, capturing the everyday objects within the home, allows Laurenleely to live in these imagined fictional worlds. In Pachinko, the form of the roof and its clay tiles loosely referenced from the Korean hanok gives the piece a unique structure that places it within its context. Hues of russet red, muted purple, and green will finish the earthly and modest essence of the materials, plants, food, and objects within and around the home.

Imagining the fishermen sharing the front room and eating around the low table every night, Sunja and the family cooking rice and washing pots in the kitchen at the back, and sleeping on floor mats with the house helpers in the small room in between...

“The wooden house they had rented was not large, just shy of five hundred square feet. Sliding paper doors divided the house into three snug rooms. Eventually, the kitchen was pushed out into the vegetable garden to make way for the larger cooking pots. In the kitchen garden, ponytail radishes, grown fat and heavy from the early spring rain, were ready to be pulled from the brown earth. Pollack and squid were strung neatly across a long clothesline. Their prosperity was more evident inside. In the kitchen, stacks of rice and soup bowls rested on well-built shelves...”

Limited edition of just 35. Designed by Laurenleely. Hand signed & numbered.

A1 Japanese

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Pachinko - Laurenleely - Limited Edition