This exhibition introduces the work of two designers recently hired to teach in the UMD Department of Art & Design.
Phil Choo:
Phil Choo is a Korean graphic designer who studied at Iowa State University (ISU) for his MFA. While in graduate school, he worked as a newspaper photographer, and as a graphic designer for the International Visual Literacy Association, the College of Design, and Landscape Architecture Extension at ISU. His work has received awards nationally and internationally. Phil became an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) in 2002. He designs interactivity through his experimental typography and web sites. Currently, examples of his design work include the Art and Design Lecture Series posters and the web sites for the department of Art and Design and Visualization and Digital Imaging Lab in UMD. He will present work that dates from 2000 – 2004, which in turn, has become a new starting point for current work in graphic design.
Eun-kyung Suh:
Suh is an Assistant Professor at UMD, teaching 3D Design, Architecture Studio and 3D Digital Studio. Since receiving her MA, MFA in Design from the University of Iowa, she has built an extensive record of national and international exhibitions. Recently Suh’s jewelry work was published in Minimal Rings by Full Spectrum Publishing, which features a chronological history of minimal design in jewelry explored by the innovative international designers. She adopts a sculptural approach to creating wearable objects such as a ring, a necklace and a brooch, which are the most common types of work most jewelry makers (metal smith) create. She does not intend to create small sized jewelry, which decorates or beatify a wearer’s body but she does emphasize the interrelationship between a wearable object and the human body. In contrast to sculptors who use clothing in a representative manner but do not intend that apparel to be worn, her works falls somewhere between truly wearable and representative of an idea and/or emotion. In Eun-kyung Suh’s words, “My work captures moments of emotion –fear, anger, defense, desperation –when vulnerable beings are exposed to dangers, hardship, suffering, and loss. These biomorphic pieces in the form of wearable objects such as rings, necklaces, or brooches, which most metal smiths create, is not merely common jewelry but representative media speaking for the tears and sorrow of those suffering. Subtle, delicate, often disconcerting, they bear witness to Iraqi civilian sacrifice during war, parents grieving for lost children, horrors of inhumanity. If we could wear our tears, this is how they might look.”