Thursday, June 18, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Summary of my Korea Trip
This is the paper that I wrote summarizing the highlights of my trip to Korea, so if you do not feel like reading all my posts, this will give you a good sense of what happened this spring!
The workshop that I attended during my faculty-let study abroad program consisted of a workshop with the International Society for Ceramic Art Education (ISCAEE) in conjunction with the World Ceramic Art Jamboree (WOCEF). Both organizations hold a conference every two years and this year teamed up for the “Adventures of the Fire” theme in the cities of Yeoju and Icheon. ISCAEE provided housing for the participants, of whom were international students, Korean students and all respective professors accompanying the various schools. The booths that were assigned to the different schools showcased students demonstrating techniques in the ceramic arts as well as their professors and master potters. The workshops were five days, the first two days were all the participating Korean schools, the middle Wednesday was for professor demonstrations, and the final two days were for international student workshops.
The different techniques ranged from traditional throwing (on a potter’s wheel) to contemporary performance art involving the concept of making and working with clay. The various schools were genuinely interested in the goings on of other schools, students and professors from all over the world were given a venue to share and learn about one another. During the Korean student workshops, I had the opportunity to browse and experience some of these new and old techniques. One technique I found very relevant to my own artwork was that of Kim Sun, a student at Seoul Women’s University. The women there were demonstrating the technique of weaving fibers into pottery. I met the girls and they invited me to help them drill holes in the leather-dry pottery. After the holes are drilled, the pots are fired and glazed, and then the fibers are woven into them as the last step of the process. During their demonstration, I was able to inquire about the concept of this artwork. The artist who was utilizing this technique was named Kim Sun, and she explained to me that the fiber made the pots warmer, more welcoming. Kim Sun said pottery can be cold and rigid, but when fibers are woven in, they soften the feeling of the piece and you might be more attracted to it. I was very excited about this concept, and explained that I worked in almost the opposite way, by taking qualities of fabrics and imitating them with clay so they are less welcoming, making the clothing we wear into almost a kind of armor that protects us from the world. The women at Seoul National University became good friends of the Grand Valley State University students, and our friendship was made stronger throughout the duration of our trip. The play between fiber and ceramic is something I have been interested in all through my ceramic artwork, and I have been in contact with Kim Sun since we left. Another student that I was so fortunate to meet was Gin, a student attending Seoul National University of Technology. We had a deep converstation about the basic concepts that drive our artwork and found that we have a lot in common. We both deal with the social pressures on males and females to be gender specific, to adhere to the social norms of society becomes a huge stress. By making artwork that expresses our frustration with this pressure, we are allowed an outlet. Our mutual interest led us to exchange favorite artists' names and ideas for future art projects. Gin has become a great contact both personally and professionally.
I and the rest of the Grand Valley State University students decided to base our workshop in the central characteristic traits that make clay so unique to all other mediums, and that is the malleability, memory, and human touch required with clay to create a work of art. Our focus lay in the touch that clay can capture; the spontaneous can be recorded with it. We decided to build three structures by squeezing and essentially touching the clay once. With one squeeze we make a small unit, with that unit we build a space to live in. Our spaces ended up becoming our “temporary homes” symbolic of our time in Korea, and the small units became symbolic of all the experiences we had that made up that time. As the workshop progressed, we had many interested bystanders, who soon became participants in the building of our temporary homes. The original intention was a reaction and interaction with the space we were given, but our product produced something a little unexpected. By allowing the viewers to become engaged in such a direct way by touching and building alongside us, we produced a meaningful and lasting impression that had almost nothing to do with any product that we might keep. By making a temporary structure, we enriched the preciousness of the experience, which was our goal from the beginning—the experience was the concept, the clay was the medium, and our humanity was the tool.
The collaboration of our workshop was a huge success for our overall experience of Korea. We were able to create something without the stress of trying to “finish” the work or have it become something spectacular. The beauty lay in the experience of working with new people, getting to talk and know who they were, and understand that ceramic professionals everywhere are very similar people. As we moved onto our next city, Icheon, we were now impressed with the size and public interest of the WOCEF Biennial. Some of the Korean culture that I long for now is the rich history and tradition that Koreans will always possess, especially within the ceramic world. The development of ceramic technique is essentially Korean, and this honor is evident in the culture. The public interest and respect was obvious in the numbers of everyday people attending the WOCEF Biennial. There were children all the time, everywhere excited about ceramics, anxious to get to the front of the workshop lines. Along with my Bachelor of Fine Arts, I am also pursuing my Bachelors of Arts in Art Education to teach this to our American children, and I hope to inspire such awe and excitement in my own community.
In Icheon, our professor, Hoon Lee was participating in an international professional workshop. There we were able to watch him work on his performance as well as meet and interact with other professional artists. The variety of work was great, but some of the most impressionable to me were of Nina Hole. She is an artist who works on large, (around 20 feet), architectural sculptures built on site and transformed into their own wood kilns because of their immense size. The project she worked on while at the workshop was spectacular and required teams of people to help build and especially fire this work. Constantly feeding the fire for three days and monitoring the progression was an experience I was most interested in. The teamwork required and knowledge of the process was impressive. While we were assisting part of this process, we were able to interact with other student assistants, mostly graduate levels that were there to assist all the workshop artists. I learned many things from these students, things like how the Korean school system works and the different kinds of classes required for ceramic students. We were quite similar in our education, and even though communication was not always easy, it was always worthwhile. They were able to teach us many things about simple Korean traditions, everyday living and what the Korean words were for certain things.
Our last city was Seoul, and we were hosted in the dormitory on Seoul National University of Technology’s campus. We were able to see the undergraduate campus of our professor, and meet again with some students we had befriended in Yeoju. We had individual rooms which ended up being a relief from the constant companionship that we had been experiencing the entire trip. I found that the privacy helped my companions and I be more at ease and peaceful when we were together during the day. Seoul the city was overwhelming at times, and always interesting. The best way I found to describe Seoul was that everywhere was the same, yet a little different from the large cities of the United States. This dichotomy was in the way that people were a little friendlier and genuinely hospitable, yet the customs leaned towards conservancy in things that were discussable with new aquaintances. Another example was the delightful surprise in architecture, with finding traditional Korean homes tucked in among the modern skyscrapers.
Living with and working with the people of Korea was an experience I can hardly begin to explain. I know that I have improved my skills for meeting, relating to and working with people from all over the world. My understanding of the world has deepened; I do not just know about the rich history of Korea by reading about it in books, but rather I have felt it under my own feet, seen it in the contemporary life, tasted it at every meal, and loved it. I was particularly impressed with this genuine interest and honest hospitality that we were all shown by our hosts. Working and sharing provided an opportunity to relate and befriend many people in my profession, make lasting memories and begin to build my professional international network.
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