OLI_HANNA

The path so far걸어온 길

Senses and making, coding and language, and design.
The paths I’ve walked came together into a room for bringing thoughts out.

I’m Hanna Lee, founder of in:JOYFULL, a creative studio in Hanam, Korea. I design and lead creative programs for children and adults, teach creative coding, and work as a graphic designer.

As a high school student, I lived in unfamiliar countries. English flowed into my ears, but I was always fighting fear. There were grown-ups who never hurried me and looked first at what I was good at. Beside them, I learned for the first time that it’s okay to be slow.

When I came home to Korea after studying advertising and graphic design, things were different. Exam culture demanded right answers and quick results, and I ran on that treadmill too — I wasn’t really leading my own life. Inside, I kept asking what work was truly worth doing, but for a while I tucked the patience I had been given away in a drawer.

The drawer opened again at the postnatal care center, holding my fourth baby. I read that coding would be a language children use in the future, just like English, so I began learning it. Sharing it with children, I realized it, too, is one more way of bringing thoughts out where others can see them.

I studied design, yet I never thought of myself as an artist. Spending time with children, I realized art doesn’t have to be grand. Small expressions connect one heart to another. Like The Artist’s Way says, we are all born creative — we just rarely get the chance to bring it out.

When COVID kept everyone in front of screens, I cleared out a room and made it an art room for my daughters. There they woke up their senses and spread out their ideas. And when I made art with shy children, their hands moved first, and one by one they began telling their own stories. So I thought: thoughts come out at different paces, so there should be a room that waits for them — the way those grown-ups once waited for me.

Today, when we wonder about something, AI hands us the answer first. That’s exactly why I believe time to bring things out by ourselves matters more than ever: choosing the materials, choosing our own thoughts, and seeing it through. The experiences that build up this way wake our senses and become the strength to lead our own lives.

in:JOYFULL is a creative space for that time. A place that values process over finished work, and each person’s pace over right answers. Every time I open the door, I still feel that flutter of excitement.