A 75-year-old grandfather from Brazil has harnessed the power of social media to connect with his family living around the world. Chan Jae uses Instagram to share his drawings with his three young grandchildren who live in New York City and South Korea.
Jae’s son, Ji Lee, recalled to CTV’s Your Morning on Wednesday the moment his reluctant father agreed to start drawing pictures for his grandchildren and posting them online. Lee said his father and mother were sitting around his dinner table in New York City in April of last year. Lee’s son Astro had just been born and his parents were visiting from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Jae said that he wondered what Astro would be when he grew up. When Lee asked him why, Jae responded that he wouldn’t be around to witness it for himself.
“That made me very sad,” Lee said. “I was also sad because Astro would maybe never get to know my father very well.”
That’s when Lee was struck with an idea. He managed to convince his 75-year-old father to start drawing pictures for his son and Astro’s two cousins living in South Korea. Lee said he was even able to persuade his reluctant, less-than-tech-savvy father to post photos of the drawings on Instagram.
Lee titled the Instagram project “Drawings for my grandchildren” and the family began posting images to their account in the summer. In the last couple of weeks, the Instagram account has gone viral attracting 154,000 followers. Jae posts a new drawing every day, of subjects including life in Brazil, his grandchildren, South Korea, superheroes and dinosaurs.
Lee explained that his 75-year-old mother Kyong Ja An writes the captions that accompany the drawings, which are usually memories, personal messages or lessons for the grandchildren. She then sends the little stories to Lee in New York and his sister in Korea via Facebook messenger. Lee translates them from Korean to English and his sister translates them to Portuguese. Finally, Jae posts the images and captions to Instagram.
Although Astro is still too young to appreciate his grandfather’s artwork, Lee said that his nephews living in South Korea still remember when they used to live with their grandparents in Brazil, and the drawings are a nice reminder of that time.
“I think it gives them (his nephews) a little bit of comfort to know that their grandpa is there for them,” Lee said. “They really enjoy seeing what grandpa draws for them every day.”
Since the Instagram account recently exploded in popularity, Lee said the family has been inundated with messages from fans asking how they can purchase prints of his father’s drawings. He said they’re working on creating a website in order to sell the prints and to be able to donate some of the proceeds from those sales to charity.
Lee said, for the family, the most satisfying part of “Drawings for my grandchildren” has been receiving messages from fans.
“The most rewarding thing for us has been hearing from hundreds of people who have been inspired by this story who want to talk to their own aging parents, who at one point had a passion in their lives, to inspire them to draw again or take photos again and teach them how to use Instagram so they can feel connected with the rest of the world and their families,” Lee said.
