Images courtesy of the artists |
Firing clay has been amongst the few mediums to have persevered through thousands of years. Three contemporary ceramic artists pursue their own exploration with clay while reshaping the tradition. Transcending the stereotype of the medium, Janny Baek, Steven Young Lee, and Sunkoo Yuh offer new perspectives shaped by cultural and social influences and reflect the shifting emphasis within the practice of ceramic art.
In this conversation, three artists discuss their work and career, and the group exhibition at The Korea Society.
Artist Talk | Three Clay Artists
Thursday, October 12, 2023
Video release
@ The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor, NYC
Gallery hours: Monday-Friday 10 AM - 4:30 PM
By Appointment Only
**Pre-registration is now required for all Korea Society events, and an ID is required for security.**
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS: 
[center] Janny Baek is an artist and architect born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in Queens, New York. Janny received her BFA in ceramics from Rhode Island School of Design, and worked as a sculptor in animation and toys before completing her Masters in Architecture at Harvard University, and counts her experiences in craft, pop culture, industrial design and architecture as the major influences on her current work in ceramics. After founding her firm, McMahon-Baek Architecture, in 2014, Janny returned to making sculptures and started her ceramics practice in 2019. Baek currently lives and works in lower Manhattan with her husband and their two daughters.
[right] Steven Young Lee is an artist in Helena, Montana. He was the Resident Artist Director of the Archie Bray Foundation for 16 years until 2022, where he maintained an active studio practice along with orchestrating an organization devoted to excellence in ceramics. In 2004-05, he lectured and taught at numerous universities throughout China as part of a cultural and educational exchange in Jingdezhen, Shanghai and Beijing and spent two months in Seoul, South Korea studying ceramic tradition and history. In 2005-6 he was a visiting professor at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C. Lee has lectured extensively in North America and Asia. In the Fall of 2016 he was one of four artists featured as part of the Renwick Invitational at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. In March 2013 he participated on a panel, "Americans in the Porcelain City," at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Also in 2013, he was one of several international artists invited to participate in “New Blue and White,” an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA featuring contemporary artists working in the blue-and-white tradition. In 2019, he had a solo exhibition at the Portland Art Museum. In 2021, his work was included in “Crafting America”, a survey of contemporary craft at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and OBJECTS:USA 2020 curated by Glenn Adamson in partnership with R&Co in New York, NY. His work has been collected by the Smithsonian Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, the Newark Museum of Art, the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, the Everson Museum of Art, the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul, Korea, and many private and public collections. Lee earned his BFA and MFA in Ceramics from Alfred University.
[left] Sunkoo Yuh’s work is informed by his personal and intimate experiences in everyday life. He records these impressions as spontaneous yet intricate ink and brush works. Selected two-dimensional compositions are then represented and re-contextualized into conceptual and three-dimensional forms on a small to monumental scale. Yuh was born in 1960 in South Korea, immigrated to the U.S. in 1988 and now resides in Athens, GA, where he is a professor of art at the University of Georgia. He received his BFA degree from Hongik University, Seoul, Korea and his MFA degree from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred, NY. Yuh was the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation grant, the Grand Prize at the 2nd World Ceramic Biennale International Competition, Icheon, Korea, The Elizabeth R. Raphael Founder’s Prize and the Virginia A. Groot Foundation grant. His work is in the collections of The Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, Icheon World Ceramic Center, Icheon, Korea, the International Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred, NY, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, the Oakland Museum of Art, California and more.