Sight Lines

“Sight Lines” by Maria Ah Hyun Stracke explores the meditative process of creation and perception. Using hanji (traditional Korean mulberry paper) and silk, Stracke’s abstract works blend painting and tapestry, reflecting landscapes and architecture without immediate identification. These large-scale compositions invite viewers into a contemplative space, balancing delicacy and scale, and leaving room for new associations and interpretations to unfold.

Maria Ah Hyun Stracke (b. Busan, South Korea) is a Philadelphia-based artist and educator. Stracke creates complex, layered structures through the mending, reconfiguration, and reuse of hanji (traditional Korean mulberry paper), silk, graphite, paper, and paper clay. As each composition evolves, varied surfaces, shapes, and seams emerge and interact with one another to develop an intuitive material language. These process-oriented works evoke the general and the specific, from oceanic terrains and abstracted landscapes to Korean folk-art motifs and architectural forms.

Stracke earned her PhD in Literature and Criticism from The Graduate Center – City University of New York and her MFA in Painting and Drawing from Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University. She is currently teaching visual art at Tyler School of Art and Architecture and Rutgers University-Camden.