Artistic Statement Revision 2

I am a jewelry designer born in Seoul, Korea. Even though, I majored in international business administration at college, I’ve always been fond of making things with my hands since I was very young. My mother is such a passionate woman who is eager to learn constantly about something new and eye-catching. When I was in college, she started to learn about gemstones and she brought home some interesting stuffs for her home study. I was so fascinated by the tools and microscope to appraise gemstones and this incident leaded to change my career to be a gemologist.

While I was studying Gemology at Gemological Institute of America in USA, I became really into the charm of color stones and captivated by the inexplicable colors from individual stones. I believed that it was my destiny to work with such beautiful gemstones. I determined to go to art school again and learned jewelry design properly. I worked hard as an apprentice under strict German professors at Rhode Island School of Design for three years. After I attained my B.F.A. degree in Jewelry and Light metal, I finally became a jewelry designer.

Rhode Island is famous for the graceful natural environment of evergreen and pine tree forest by the ocean beach. I used to collect colorful pebbles and sea glasses worn by waves on the beach. The subtle color changes of my collection by the stunning sunset light had astonished me all the time. Color is the most important aspect of my jewelry along with the feeling of materials I bring into play.

I love mixing the vivid color stones with unusual materials such as felted wool fabrics, interesting laces piece from old cloth, and odd pictures, which are not conventionally used for jewelry, to bring in unexpected event of color play with stones. People who buy my jewelry always point out the lovely mixture of colors of stones and warmness of my jewelry. They are mostly not fancy looking business women with nice suits or cocktail dresses, but moms with strollers in leggings. I love to make jewelry easy to wear on almost any occasions, day and night.

Making jewelry is an architectural experience in micro universe. I have to continuously train my unaided eyes to observe the tiny world correctly and my hands to work gently with sophisticated materials. Even so, working with expensive materials taxes me physically and mentally. The most nerve-racking obligation of my job is making the piece into ideal proportion. Since the subtle change of fraction can cause a decisive mistake to ruin the entire look of jewelry. Human eyes are really precise and sensitive especially to measure length and degree. If any jewelry object is made not balanced well, it is so easy to notice and I cannot help to reconstruct it.

I adore the beautiful paintings of Gustav Klimt(1862-1918), Austrian symbolist painter, especially all the works from his “Golden Phase”. His works in the phase are distinguished with medieval and Japanese styles of using decorative colors and elegant gold. He is also famous for the bold expression of erotic female body in his painting. To me, a gemstone resembles a female body which is really sexual and seductive and I can not hesitate to design. -woman studio at home in Connecticut. I wish I could keep making jewelry which makes people happy with the look of freshness from cheerful color combination and also grow my companionships with people who like me and my works.