The origin of Kromatica
The seed of Atelier Kromatica was born a long long time ago, without me realizing it…
December 2022
It was week 6 into seeing each other. The theme for the company holiday party was, cyberspace, but the unspoken theme has always been dinosaurs. Our idea of the matching outfit is a pair of dino plushies that lit up, and I wanted a piece of garment to hold up my dino. We named them "Technosaur” and “Rainbowsaur”.
At the end of this first collaboration , I took the scrap materials of my garment, and made an earring.
I wore this earring as my lucky charm.
To me, it symbolized a moment of sublimated creativity, making something out of nothing; but this something wasn’t just anything. It caught light, reflected and refracted in unimaginable magical ways. It solidified my identity, a reminder that I can always make my own reality. The earring was the totem for both my ayahuasca ceremonies.
I wore it everywhere :)
For three years, life was fine. I was just getting by, losing myself day by day.
I knew it too. I desperately needed help. In October 2025, a project fell on my lap, a project about prison and liberation.
The reflection came: what am I doing in this prison that I created for myself?
December 2025
When the break-up happened on winter solstice, the house was under renovation and we had already been living at an Airbnb for weeks, it was the last night of the stay and we had plans to go to Yosemite over Christmas. I went alone and locked myself inside a cabin for 5 days.
I drew a telling oracle reading from a dear collaborator’s deck (based on San Francisco) and was very clearly advised the following: current issue is rooted in nostalgia, likely outcome is twilight zone, do not hop on the party bus, and the best case scenario is a network of grace. My lucky star is always watching out for me.
And I looked at the earring again.
Remembering his logic of “it’s Burning Man, just make everything bigger!” I realized what I must do. Every cell of my body was calling me to do it.
I got to work.
I started getting out of bed, and spent 12 hours a day at our shared makerspace to work on this piece. There was no point in doing it, but it saved me. For a moment, it was a break-up gift to him, then it became a break-up gift to me. Then it became an art piece for the prison project.
From start to finish, it took 17 days. The event at the prison was a great success. The chandelier lit up the group shower room, and it lit up some hope for me. I was reminded that I can create my own reality.
Meanwhile, I had been bouncing around friends’ couches for weeks (speaking of the network of grace), while searching for a place that can fit all six of my pianos…
Somehow, we found a space. Things just kept working, and we signed a lease on Jan 28th, 2026.
The space was named
Atelier Kromatica.
Kroma (Greek: khrōma; English: chroma, chromatic)
In color science, art, and the Munsell color system, chroma refers to the purity, vividness, or saturation of a color. It describes how intense a color appears when compared to a gray of the exact same lightness.
In music theory, it refers to the size of a specific, minimal interval step (such as a flat or sharp) within a musical scale.
You might think the story ends here.
The second night of moving into Shipley Street, I forgot to lock my car, and came out in the morning to it being rummaged through, but tidily.
They did not take the cash of $150, or the $2 bill.
They took two jars of herbs (lemon verbena and Gol-Gav-Zaban/cow tongue flower), the San Francisco oracle deck, and the earring.
I was robbed by a witch.
Some says that the witch was me, coming back from the future.
The earring has left me, but the idea has been born. I didn’t need to wear it to remember who I am anymore.
Thank you for stepping into my break-up art. Welcome to Atelier Kromatica, here I carry the dream that the two of us had, but will have to live them separately.
