Beyond the Kitchen
Jae Eun Park
Donggu Youth Agit Center
Gwangju
May 22, 2026
(Jisu Sheen recently moved from New Haven to Gwangju, South Korea, where she’s covering local arts and culture for the New Haven Independent and Midbrow.)
Jae Eun Park is a girl from the South—where the food is good, the weather’s warm, and the people are even warmer. I’m talking, of course, about Gwangju, South Korea.
Wait, I mean Atlanta, Georgia.
Wait, OK, let me explain.
Park was born in Gwangju and spent the past 11 years among the peaches and sunshine of the ATL. After burning out at the pastry station of a Michelin-star restaurant, she moved back to Gwangju in December.
I met Park at her new culinary/art studio in Yangnim-dong Friday before visiting a solo exhibit of her drawings depicting back-of-house scenes from her old workplace in Atlanta.
I had actually arrived in the neighborhood early, hoping to run into a coffeeshop for some caffeine before meeting Park. On the street, I saw the cutest storefront garden. (I’d later find out these were edible plants, for farm-to-table needs). Through the window, I saw Park taking care of her plants; this was her studio.
I didn’t want to rush her, so I tried to slip by unnoticed, but she spotted me. I waved. No sweat, she was ready. We went for coffee together.
“I cannot watch The Bear,” she said. The high-stress kitchen-based TV drama was too real. When I got to her show, I saw a sign in one kitchen scene that said, “PUSH!!!” It was somehow even more aggressive than the “Every Second Counts” sign from The Bear.
Park’s pencil lines were intricate and free, still carrying the in-the-moment feel of an active kitchen. The scenes depicted Park’s last restaurant job before moving, a place called Atlas that holds not the Earth but something even grander: a prized Michelin star. Park’s choice of subject matter, composition, and even titles showed her alternative sensibilities.
A drawing of quail and duck hanging by their feet in an industrial freezer was titled “Birds.”
A collection of drawings in another corner was called “Hands!”
The word is often used in restaurant kitchens as a directive, telling servers the food is ready and calling them to action. For Park’s “Hands!” she takes the word at face value, focusing on the literal hands hard at work.
Her coworkers’ hands are prepping, placing, holding, grinding for a collective end result. Park’s pencil work had an illustrative feel, creating fabric-like textures and shifting focus through the relative tightness of the lines.
There was a deep sense of care throughout the exhibit. The kitchen workers were focused on the finished pieces they were creating for the customers, while Park’s gaze fell on the process itself.
One of Park’s friends visiting the space noted the posture of a figure in her art. Park laughed, explaining that as she was taking reference photos, that colleague kept standing in a conspicuous, strong stance, hoping she would notice. She didn’t play along at first, but she must have at some point. The drawing exists.
Two years ago, Atlas was gearing up for their 2024 New Year’s festivities. The vibes were luxury, it was the busiest season of the restaurant calendar, and Park was in the back with her colleagues pouring champagne.
“I feel so empty,” she remembers thinking. She had to work until 2 a.m. and come back before 8 a.m. to prep brunch the next day.
“It was very expensive champagne,” she said. But there are things money can’t buy.
She looked into her future and saw a world of people chasing something they could never catch. “I think I saw that emptiness,” she said.
She asked herself, “Are you going to keep doing it and destroy yourself?” The answer was no. She quit and got an office job at a battery company. It was all right. But there was more on the horizon for Park.
She fought against her nature and took the leap back to Gwangju. Park said she is someone who hesitates a lot. But she wants to be a doer. “Nothing is really stopping me,” she realized. “Only I stop me.”
And now she’s back. “Like salmon,” she said, referring to the creatures’ migration upstream to the place where they first hatched.
“Everything is sweet and new,” she said of this time in her life. She hangs out with her pit bull Ttutti and cultivates her hydroponic garden. She created her studio from the bare bones of a building that sat empty for seven or eight years. Her long-plans for the space are still in the works; she’s taking this year to meet people and figure it all out.
At the show, Park poured tea for her friends, who asked questions about the people she drew. In a different year, on a different continent, Park’s hands were among the ones racing to “PUSH!!!” in that busy kitchen. Now, the doubly southern salmon is using those hands to build a calmer life.
