Regal portraits of Queen Henrietta Maria and Frederick Douglass hang high in the Entrance Hall in Government House, the official residence of Maryland's governor and his family. They're the kind of stately works one would expect to find in the formal, public portion of the 125-year-old Georgian-style brick estate, which sits behind an iron fence among meticulously manicured shrubs, impossibly green grass, and beds of colorful flowers on State Circle in the heart of historic Annapolis.

Pass through a few more elegant public spaces into the private lower family room, where the leather couch and flat-screen TV offer refuge from the harsh glare of political life, and the art that adorns the walls is very different. A landscape depicting trees whose trunks cross seamlessly contains deep blues, grays, and rich browns. Pieces ranging from Asian-inspired ink drawings to Western abstract and expressionist paintings are displayed throughout the home, adding a personal touch to the mansion, whose current inhabitants are perhaps its unlikeliest.

The artist of these contemporary works, Yumi Hogan, CAS/MFA '10, is from Naju, a South Korean town about 175 miles south of Seoul and a world away—literally and figuratively—from the most opulent public dwelling in Maryland.

Six months after her husband Larry's stunning upset victory made him just the second Republican in the past four decades to win the state's highest elected office—and her the first Korean-born wife of a governor in the United States—Hogan is sitting in a wooden armchair in the formal living room, still trying to wrap her head around how it happened.

"It's like a museum," the first lady says of her new home, which also houses paintings from the Peabody Art Collection by such masters as Alice Worthington Ball, Charles Willson Peale, and Francis Guy. She's stylishly dressed in white wedges, a red pencil skirt, and a ruffled white blouse. Her black hair is perfectly coiffed. "Still, it's not like my house. You never know your future, how it will change."

That reality leveled the first family in June, when the governor was diagnosed with cancer—an advanced, aggressive form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The disease is the latest challenge for Hogan, whose path has meandered more than the creek outside her previous home, in Edgewater, Maryland, where her husband, a real estate developer who never before held public office, built her a third-floor art studio with plenty of windows. The youngest of eight children, Hogan grew up far from all this, on a chicken farm in Jeonnam Province. An artistic soul from birth, as a little girl she would walk through the woods near the farm and take note of the angles and color of the trees. When coloring with her friends, she told them that they should make the sky bluer.

"Ever since I was young, that was my dream: 'I'm going to be a teacher and artist,'" she says.

Pursuit of that goal brought Hogan and her first husband to America when she was just 18 (19 in Korean, because when a baby is born there she is already 1). They landed in Texas, where they had three daughters, but the marriage eventually ended. After a stint in California, a friend told her about the stellar public schools in Howard County, Maryland.

A single mother who was determined to provide her children with the best educational opportunities, she moved her modern family cross-country, where she found a job as a cashier and earned an associate's degree in art once her daughters were teenagers.

"I can't remember ever wanting anything," her middle daughter, Jaymi Sterling, told Baltimore magazine. "Looking back, I don't know how she did it."

Hogan was showing her work at an art show in 2001 when a man strolled in and handed her a business card. "I was more interested in the artist than the art," the governor likes to say. Yumi didn't call Larry for months, but once they began dating, both were smitten. They married in 2004, after which he encouraged her to attend art school. She chose the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), in Baltimore, where she teaches today.

"She was a very good student, extremely conscientious and very serious about her work," says Robert Merrill, a professor in the humanistic studies department. "She fell into the role as a kind of mentor and helper to a lot of younger Korean students."

At this time Hogan's work was primarily abstract, and she was interested mostly in Western styles and materials. But as she earned her degree in painting and then headed to graduate school at AU, her focus began to shift.

"Her work became more personal, more connected to her background," says Luis Silva, director of AU's graduate program in studio art. "By the time she left, I could see much more of her heritage. She was using Asian techniques, but at the same time she had a bit of Western influence. It's really a melding of her two worlds."

"I was always really impressed with her openness," says AU art professor Tim Doud, who taught Hogan in his contemporary theory and criticism course. "As a graduate student, she was open to criticism and hearing other people's ideas."

For her MFA thesis show, she exhibited primarily works of sumi ink on Korean hanji paper, a method she teaches today at MICA.

"Teachers are all different, but I think her style is perfect because she is able to help develop the independence and creativity o students, but also impose a certain amount of external discipline," Merrill says. "She's extremely caring about people as individuals. She likes to get to know people, think about how they experience learning, and then do what she can to foster and develop that. She's got a good balance of being strict and pushing students, but also understanding their individual needs and pace of learning."

Hogan's artistic productivity slowed as her husband's political career unexpectedly accelerated. Before meeting her, he'd made two unsuccessful bids for Congress, and she thought of him as a "simple real estate guy." When he first broached the idea of running for governor, she was supportive, if not overly enthusiastic.

"It's the same thing in every country, every county," she says. "Politicians, they don't hear from people. I tell my husband, if you run for governor, you have to hear from the people."

As she became accustomed to life on the campaign trail—and began to realize that he just might win—she eased more comfortably into her role as a political spouse. She's identified two issues she'd like to highlight as first lady, although she's not yet quite sure how she'll
go about promoting them.

"I'm not a politician," she says. "Before I was first lady, I was an artist. I want to help the art community. I was a single mom. I know how hard it is to survive. I can share my story."

After doing so, Hogan leads her guests through the kitchen, up the back stairs, and through a bedroom. "When I was a little girl, six or seven, I saw my mom and my grandmother make silk," she says as she points to one of her paintings. The fluidity of the fabric reminds her of water and the wind. "That inspires me—nature."

Our destination is her new art studio. Before she had the drapes removed, the walls painted yellow, and her easel, brushes, and canvases brought in, it was a playroom for former governor Martin O'Malley's son. Bright sunshine streams through three windows, illuminating one of her black and white abstract landscapes that hangs in a frame above the fireplace. Her AU graduation photo sits on a bookshelf in the corner, alongside volumes such as History of Art and Art Today.

"When I moved here to Maryland, I found it's like Korea," she says, speaking as usual from an artist's point of view. "We have four seasons; they're about the same size."

Now, the two lands share something

Hogan's artistic productivity slowed as her husband's political career unexpectedly accelerated. Before meeting her, he'd made two unsuccessful bids for Congress, and she thought of him as a "simple real estate guy." When he first broached the idea of running for governor, she was supportive, if not overly enthusiastic.

"It's the same thing in every country, every county," she says. "Politicians, they don't hear from people. I tell my husband, if you run for governor, you have to hear from the people."

As she became accustomed to life on the campaign trail—and began to realize that he just might win—she eased more comfortably into her role as a political spouse. She's identified two issues she'd like to highlight as first lady, although she's not yet quite sure how she'll
go about promoting them.

"I'm not a politician," she says. "Before I was first lady, I was an artist. I want to help the art community. I was a single mom. I know how hard it is to survive. I can share my story."

After doing so, Hogan leads her guests through the kitchen, up the back stairs, and through a bedroom. "When I was a little girl, six or seven, I saw my mom and my grandmother make silk," she says as she points to one of her paintings. The fluidity of the fabric reminds her of water and the wind. "That inspires me—nature."

Our destination is her new art studio. Before she had the drapes removed, the walls painted yellow, and her easel, brushes, and canvases brought in, it was a playroom for former governor Martin O'Malley's son. Bright sunshine streams through three windows, illuminating one of her black and white abstract landscapes that hangs in a frame above the fireplace. Her AU graduation photo sits on a bookshelf in the corner, alongside volumes such as History of Art and Art Today.

"When I moved here to Maryland, I found it's like Korea," she says, speaking as usual from an artist's point of view. "We have four seasons; they're about the same size."

Now, the two lands share something—someone—else remarkable in common.