YoonJee Kwak, Visual Arts Faculty, was recently bestowed an honorable mention for the Chungju International Craft Biennial in Korea and also accepted into the Jingdezhen International Ceramic Biennial in China. For both biennials, she submitted work from her “Patterned Memories” series, which is focused on squares, triangles, and other patterns constructed out of coils. Her current work involves creating the Moon Jar shape out of coils.
Ms. Kwak works with coils because she can directly attach them to her vessel. She enjoys that her mark is left on her clay, saying that people can even see her fingerprints on her vessels.
“Hand building is kind of like pressing my memories into my pieces,” Ms. Kwak said. “[Wheel-throwing], it’s kind of like smudging it.”
Her vessels are centered around human relationships. For her “Patterned Memories” series, specifically, Ms. Kwak was focused more on the surface technique.
“When I’m making my vessel, I consider the vessel as a human,” she said. She creates her pieces with the understanding that humans have different aspects to them, and these aspects are dependent on their environment. Ms. Kwak captures a wide range of memories in her vessels using their patterns, which to her, demonstrated the diversity of different vessels.
“I’m working [with] different textures and different colors on them,” Ms. Kwak said. Her work also “looks symmetrical and strict nowadays,” but she wants her vessels to “loosen up after this of works.” For her “Patterned Memories” series, she let her hands lead while building her vessels.
Ms. Kwak said that her husband and her best friend have been the most supportive of her, helping her with these biennials and with her artwork overall. She is encouraged by her husband’s art, which she said pushes her forward.
Ms. Kwak views herself as a brave person whose fearlessness shows up in the studio frequently.
“It’s just clay. Just do it… whatever you want.” She encourages students to not “be afraid” and “just attach or add or cut it and [do] whatever you want to do,” Ms. Kwak said to her students. “Clay is about life. I think [they’re] the same.”
She does her work under the principle that even if works get messed up, they can be good art.
“It can be a happy accident,” she said.
In the studio, not everything goes according to plan. The textures that Ms. Kwak creates have a lot of potential cracks. She further explained, “Sometimes there’s a big crack, especially on the wider part. Once it’s finished firing, [it may be] cracked or something [may have] popped out.” She said she likes these changes “because [she’s] considering [her] vessel a person, and this is just a different person.” To alter these cracks, she sometimes puts gold on the scars or the popped-up part. “It kind of feels like healing,” Ms. Kwak said.
As a newer faculty member of Loomis Chaffee, Ms. Kwak expressed much gratitude towards Loomis’s beautiful community and stated that it is supportive of her as an artist and an educator. “[I] appreciate it and really [enjoy] working with talented students,” she said.
To all of the Loomis artists, Ms. Kwak said, “In life, there are inherent risks. The greatest risk of all is the risk of inaction. So, be bold and courageous, for taking action is the key to achieving your dream!”
