Photo By Scott Beseler

Ik-Joong Kang started his drawing style in the 1980s on small blocks of wood that fit in the palm of his hand, reflecting the Eastern saying, "What is revealed in the palm reflects what is in the mind."

Ik-Joong Kang deals in vast quantities. Every morning, the New York-based artist counts the number of steps he takes from his apartment to his studio in Chinatown. It's a meditation, focusing his mind and freeing his spirit from the toils of daily life.

He unlocks his studio and slips through a narrow passage. The rest of his studio is packed, floor to ceiling, with 3-inch by 3-inch drawings. He'll spend the next 10 hours drawing feverishly, pausing maybe 20 minutes for lunch.

These drawings are the result of his rigorous schedule. When he's not working, he's counting the thousands of drawings sent to him by children across the globe. He calls them dreams.

His current exhibition at the Carl Solway Gallery, Everything He Has, is really just a fraction of what Kang possesses. As the "dreams" of children arrive daily in the mailbox, Kang forges ahead at a runner's pace, sometimes cranking out 100 works a day. These drawings cover the outside of a dilapidated building near the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany.

Drawings from 21 different countries are on permanent display at Children's Hospital in Cincinnati. A giant balloon covered in children's drawings is buoyed on a lake in South Korea. Kang says one day he'll build a bridge, made entirely of children's drawings, connecting North and South Korea.

"When I build a wall with children," Kang explains, "I like to say we are building a wall of art so we can break down the wall that divides us."

Kang grew up in post-war South Korea during the 1960s. He remembers the taste of chocolate and the metallic smell of the wrapper as he opened it and placed the candy on his tongue.

"From the Mountains" is a portion of a larger work, "8,490 Days of Memory," which focuses on Kang's childhood in Seoul during the American occupation. The 8,490 small toys preserved in resin represent the number of days Kang lived in South Korea before coming to America.

Kang asked his mother to ship him the toys from his childhood along with chachka she purchased in Korean markets. In this way the resin cubes hold both memories and fabrications of Kang's childhood. When "8,490 Days of Memory" was displayed at the Whitney, a statue of Joseph McArthur, covered in chocolate, stood on top of the resin cubes.

"(Gen. Douglas) McArthur rescued South Korea from North Korean Communism," Kang says. "But still when I see McArthur there is this very bitter taste because of the war."

Sweet like the chocolates American soldiers gave the Korean children. Bitter because war leaves a bitter taste with Kang.

When Kang dreams of uniting North and South Korea his dreams take the shape of 1,000 luminous Moon Jars.

" 'Moon Jar' is my story of the sky," Kang writes. "It's the sky with floating clouds that I saw as a child from the valley of my hometown. ... It's the happiest sun ray slipping into my studio while I'm eating the $3 lunch special from Chinatown."

During the Chosun Dynasty (1392-1910) artisans formed the moon jars using white clay. Kang says there are only about nine of the cherished vessels left in the world. Moon jars are not perfect spheres. Like the Earth, it is longest around the equator. The artist sculpts two semi-spheres then joins them together and fires them in a kiln. Kang believes art can unify a people just as the artist can join together the moon jar.

In 2004 Kang built "Moon of Dream" using drawings of children from 135 countries. He attached the 3-inch by 3-inch drawings to a giant balloon that floated in a lake near Seoul for three days. On one of these days, Kang found that some of the air had escaped. It was no longer a perfect sphere.

"Amazing!" Kang said. "It is like a moon jar!"

Kang developed the drawing in the 1980s while studying at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He worked two jobs and spent time drawing while he rode the train. He found that a 3-inch by 3-inch block of wood fit perfectly in the palm of his hand and slipped easily into a pocket. Beyond the utility of this canvas was a spiritual belief. "What is revealed in the palm reflects what is in the mind," according to Eastern philosophy. Kang's small-scale drawings document his efforts to learn English and his connection with spirituality.

Each image in "Learning English Drawings" represents a day in the life of Kang learning English. The 160 notebook pages are filled with phrases from The New York Times, which Kang reads every day. Some are playful like "breast implant" or "sexual liberty." On other days he writes "good luck" over and over.

Drawings cover the phrases, like an image of the "little shopkeeper." This might be Kang working a 12-hour day at the Korean market. But he says it is less a self-portrait and more a portrait of Buddha. As he learned English, Kang found the Buddha in everything -- sexual liberty, the breast implant and the shopkeeper.

"You can feel the Buddha in the wind," Kang says. "Deep inside of childrens' eye, smiling face and even the plants trying to come up during spring season. The energy, the essence of life, I believe this is Buddha."