Korean Ceramic Art: Park Yoo Na 박유나

We are surprised to learn that Park Yoo Na didn’t intend to become an artist. She intended to follow her mother’s wish that she prepare for a medical career when her father, the captain of a merchant vessel, returned from a voyage and asked her what she really wanted to do with her life. Her answer that she wanted an artistic life was so heartfelt that he overruled her mother and Park Yoo Na entered Ewha University. She had originally wanted to study fashion design but was pushed to study ceramics by a teacher who downplayed her talent for design and awakened an interest in clay by taking her to ceramic exhibitions.

She remembers her university years with mixed emotions, recalling a professor who would secretly break all her sculptures to keep her at his assigned task of making functional pottery and another professor who encouraged her to investigate a broad range of techniques for expressing herself. After graduating she started to explore the sculptural side of ceramics while maintaining a studio and teaching part time in several universities. She decided that teaching was diverting too much time and energy from her career and she and her husband moved from Seoul to Heyri Art Valley north of the city near the DMZ. Heyri is a planned community of artists, writers, movie directors, and performers where every house is an eye popping example of super modern architecture. A popular weekend destination for Seoulites, it has numerous cafes and galleries and book shops including the cafe and restaurant UNA which share the building with her home and studio. She mentions how difficult it was to work in the public eye after having an isolated basement studio where she was never disturbed. It is also a heavy commitment to supervise the restaurant staff and occasionally share the cooking duties.

A very perceptive and self analytical artist she has actively sought to exhibit and work abroad in order to gain a wider understanding of contemporary art and to receive the kind of direct critical analysis which she feels is more common in Europe and North America. Moving through a period of reassessment of her work she has started practicing meditation as a method of focusing on her inner life and is planning a long trip to Africa as a way to absorb external stimulus.

EDUCATION

1983 M.F.A. in Ceramics, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, SK

1981 B.F.A. in Ceramics, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, SK

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2006 The One, Gana Art Space, Seoul, SK

2004 Realtion, Kimchul1080, Ilsan, SK

2003 UNA’s Story, UNA, Pasu, SK

1997 What is Impression?, Tho Art Space, Seoul, SK

1995 The Memories..., Tho Art Space, Seoul, SK

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

E-land Museum, Seoul, SK

K.B.S., Seoul, SK