Art & Design

JAEYOONMIN

is a multidisciplinary Art & Design studio that offers nature-inspired art, hand-crafted lighting, and window-wall textile panels by JAE SCHALEKAMP. Jae has provided wall murals, commissioned artworks, custom lighting, and textiles for commercial and residential clients in the New York Capital Region.  An appointment can be setup by email inquiry at jae@jaeyoonmin.com. 

JAE THE ARTIST

As a teen, immersed in learning drawing and painting, Jae pictured her adult self being an artist, living in a humble cottage that stood in an open field at the foot of rolling hills.  After obtaining a BFA from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, South Korea, she came to the US in 1993 to pursue broader experience in art and culture.  She studied studio art at Mason Gross School of Art (Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ) and textile surface design at F.I.T (Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY).

Jae's life had flown its natural course, becoming a wife, a mother, a textile designer, and a decorative painter, until she decided to redirect the flow to creating her own art, the first love of her childhood.  After 12 years of working in the textile design field, she opened a light-filled art studio in the Warehouse District of Albany, NY in 2015.

Jae is inspired by textures and colors of an individual subject in nature that portrays certain emotion.  Mundane motives, found from surrounding nature, are serenely recomposed on her canvas. Her work conveys calmness and profundity, and something even nostalgic.

Jae has been recently exploring with texture, pattern, and its emotional relation in a conceptual manner. Her love of natural materials, especially Korean mulberry paper, is harmonized with labor of handwork that delivers warmth and timelessness.

JAE THE DESIGNER

Design is not only about style and function, but also a manifestation of oneself.  Jae designed fabrics for Gretchen Bellinger, a high-end textile firm, and worked with renowned interior designers and architects from around the world for developing custom fabrics for special projects.  While she got to handle the most fine and exclusive fabrics available in the home furnishing market, she noticed her attraction for earthy textures and colors.  Beautiful natural material is the inspiration for her design, and their natural character make up the essential element of her design.

Participating in the Vanguard Showhouse – an annual event that supports the Albany Symphony Orchestra – she had opportunities to design interior spaces and to integrate her decorative paintings and artworks.  Separating design from art seems arduous for her.  Though their purposes may be different, her approach and process for art and design are very similar:  finding characteristics of an object and placing it where their presence is most natural and beautiful.