Eunjung
Park
“I
The Artist & Her Inspiration
use pottery as a medium to explore ties to traditional pottery structures,” notes Eunjung Park, who was born in South Korea and currently resides in Montvale. “My attraction to vessels is associated with my desire to investigate the metaphorical, functional and ritual connections between people and objects. Constructing teapots with forms from the organic world provides metaphorical references and invites people to ponder the ways of the natural world. My teapots, constructed from organic forms, seek to bring out the intimacy between human nature and the wildness of the natural world as it exists in my culture. Seeing tea as a gift from the natural world, I make vessels that inspire enchantment between humans and other living creatures.” Parks regards the teapot vessel as “a cosmos that contains nature.” As she explains: “The body of the teapot may be viewed as a ‘living’ vessel to contain nature like a mother’s womb that is pregnant with emergent a life. The cover of the body is an entrance to collect stories from nature through a passage in time. The spout is a nose of the creature that breathes, and the teapot invites a user with the aroma of tea through her spout, as flowers attract bees with their perfume and honey. The spout pours collected nature and nourishment through use,
allowing human nature and ‘Nature’ to meet. Finally, the handle also provides a tangible aspect for the teapot, for the object’s engagement is aroused to serve tea. “When I make teapots,” Parks continues, “I play with the structure and location of these components, using slip-cast forms from nature such as fruits and vegetables. I reorganize the forms, cutting and grafting them together. When my cast objects are reorganized, they create other creatures through my imagination and the locations of the components.” Parks studied ceramics at Hoingik University and its graduate school in Korea, and completed a master’s course in ceramics at Rhode Island School of Design, U.S.A. She has been creating pottery for more than 20 years and has enjoyed 10 solo exhibitions. Most recently, she has displayed her work at the Montvale Free Public Library. Her work has been included in The New York Times and several art magazines, and her artworks are found in the collections of the RISD Museum and the Newark Museum. Summarizing her objective for her work, Park states: “We thirst for heroes and idols, and we mass produce hero series as comics, movies and figures. I create icons that signify new meanings mixing common religious symbols and ways I experienced them in my culture.”
January/February 2014
35