David Choe Wants You to Make Something—and Feel Something Along the Way

The artist’s imagination gets our attention. His invitation to reconnect with our own creativity is what keeps us listening.

Archive photo: David Choe (right) with Garfield creator Jim Davis, 2010. Photo: Ducky, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Resized and format-converted for display; display crops may vary.

Here at the Box, we love discovering people whose creativity spills over the edges. David Choe is one of those people. His work brought us through the door, but a short video about being present recently gave us another reason to stay.

Sometimes a few minutes can reach a place that hours of conversation never quite touch.

In “This Simple Technique Changed Everything,” Choe brings a big idea down to a wonderfully human scale: pay attention to the life happening around you. Listen to someone you love. Make room for play. Recognize the thing you do in your own particular way, and share it.

“Presence is the present,” he says. That little sentence has been rattling around our heads ever since. Watch the video that inspired this feature.

Meet the artist behind the imagination

For readers meeting him for the first time, Choe is a Los Angeles-born Korean American artist whose career travels through painting, graffiti, illustration, comics and television. His creative vocabulary refuses to stay in one room. SFMOMA’s introduction to his 2010 monograph describes a body of work encompassing murals, sketchbooks, photographs, collage and much more. SFMOMA’s introduction to Choe’s work.

Music lovers may already have encountered his imagination without knowing his name: his credits include artwork for Jay-Z and Linkin Park’s Collision Course. His storytelling has also taken him into travel programming, including Thumbs Up!, and appearances with Anthony Bourdain. Explore his official biography.

That range is part of the attraction for us. We love artists who follow an idea beyond the boundaries of their job description. A wall, a record sleeve, a conversation—each can become somewhere to leave a little electricity.

A classroom without the velvet rope

What draws us to Choe as a teacher is the invitation.

In the video, he encourages people to experiment with shapes, colors and movement without making every decision carry the weight of a masterpiece. Building with LEGO becomes an example of getting absorbed in play. Creativity can also live in cooking, baking or sewing; a paintbrush is not the admission ticket.

We hear something generous in that. You do not have to become David Choe. You have to give your own curiosity a chance.

His public videos offer an informal classroom for that exploration. We find him an extraordinarily gifted creative teacher—not because every thought needs to become a rule, but because he can make the possibility of creating feel close enough to touch. Visit his official channel.

The humility of being willing to learn

One of the most affecting ideas in the clip is that children have something to teach adults about imagination and play.

That is where we hear humility: in the willingness to learn from someone who has no résumé to impress you with.

Choe’s longer conversations also complicate any tidy picture of artistic success. In his interview with Andrew Huberman, he discusses shame, addiction and his ongoing relationship with himself. These are his personal accounts, not a universal prescription. What interests us is the willingness to talk about struggle alongside achievement. Read or listen to the interview.

For us, the lesson is not that suffering makes someone talented. It is that the person holding the brush still deserves room to grow.

Giving people space to create

There are concrete examples of Choe sharing that space.

In 2013, he worked on a mural with young people at A Place Called Home in South Los Angeles. Reporting from the session describes children developing their characters and painting alongside him, with the organization’s director emphasizing how the experience helped ease their anxiety about performing well. Read the account of the mural project.

His official archive also documents work with Lidè in Haiti in 2016, supporting an initiative using arts and literacy to expand opportunities for adolescent girls. Explore the project.

That kind of giving matters to us: time, attention and an opportunity for somebody else to discover what their own hands can do.

Leave a little room for wonder

We love Choe’s work, and we are deeply moved by this part of his teaching. There is room in our admiration for curiosity, too—for looking closely, listening and forming our own relationship with the art.

If you have never explored his world, start with the short video above, then wander through his artwork archive.

Afterward, make something. It can be small. It can be strange. It can be a spectacular coconut cake.

Here at the Box, we think there is something beautiful about an artist who sends us back into our own lives a little more willing to participate.

Written by Chetuno