Saturday, March 25, 2006

2006 Hong-Ik MT

The 2006 Hong-Ik MT took place in Busan/Gimhae. MT is like freshman orientation but for the whole dept. and usually has nothing to do with school. The graduate and undergraduate classes in the Ceramics Dept went down to Busan and to Gimhae, where the new Gimhae Clayarch Museum is situated. While the undergraduate students spent most of the three days touring around the Busan area, the graduate students attended a two day seminar on the use of ceramics as a architechtural medium - not just tiles and surface treatments but also as a fundemental structural resource. Speakers included: Tony Hepburn, Susan Tunick, and Thomas Daley (son of William Daley). Particpating artists included: Jun Kaneko, William Daley, Tony Hepburn, amongst many other great artists.

Of course...it just wouldn't be right if we didn't party it up each night as well. Getting out of seoul and going to busan (for the first time!) was great. Getting to spend more time with my fellow classmates was wonderful too - I don't think i've had this much fun for a while.

Pictures from MT

Friday, March 17, 2006

Loop...


As in Loop Alternative Space which is a gallery near my house...
As in the place i recently just showed some of my work...albeit for an one night event.

Anyways, it was pretty exciting to get some work out, but unfortunately the venue was filled with some numb-nut morons who thought my pieces were some sort of ceramic digareedo and I had to remind them that we look with our eyes...f$%6ckin morons.

and yes maybe i should be happy that people were interacting with them because only then did they prove their value to be interesting tactilely as well as visually. but still i was shocked that people lacked any etiquette at all

but perhaps it was because some person knocked down one of them crashing it into pieces (although the person later found me and apologized profusedly and offerred to pay me money or buy me food - only in korea would i find such respect, as in america i would imagine the person would just disappear off into the night) or the two more that broke throughout the duration of the night.


no...as a viewer and critic as well as a creator, i often desire to touch ceramics. in fact my motto: if i don't want to touch it, it's not worth it. i don't mind them being handled. in fact it's a great compliment for me. but blowing into them? is that taking it one step too far? or a way for them to appreciate in a way i never considered ... ?

on a cool note. some guy offerred to buy some of the pieces. i found that flattering. i suppose that this event was exactly what i wanted: to see reaction to my pieces.

i'll update this entry with pictures (thank god i took shots before the show started!) later

Monday, March 13, 2006

new number...

on a wholly different note.

i have a new telephone number: 010.4704.8350

Choppin Wood...

So this weekend was kinda interesting. A while back ago, I got a call from one of the upperclassmen who asked me to go to Prof. Lee's studio/house on Sat. I thought that this was a pretty standard thing and thought that, perhaps, it was a mini-field trip to check out the studio and the wood-kiln that he has. I was wrong...oh soo wrong.

I later found out that it was just the guys from the ceramics program (5 guys out of 41 students) and so i thought that there was something kinda funny about that. We were to meet at the school studio at 6:30 in the AM and make our 1.5 hr drive out of Seoul to Prof Lee's studio. We were going to be choppin' wood.

We had to pick up some students on the way, but at about 9:30, we arrived at the ol' prof's studio where we were greeted by the man himself with a nice big grin...as he was sharpening axes that is. Quick little tour of the studio was given to me by one of the upperclassmen and we were fed our breakfast of lumberjackian proportions. and it was off to wack the wood.

i never really chopped wood before. actually i do recall splitting some logs, but these pieces of wood were no joke - huge. but i threw my back into it and starting to chop away...chopped for a few hours until about 1, where we were to eat our second huge-ass meal. and again...back to chopping wood. until about dinner which was at about 7:30. so all day we chopped wood. and although it sounds kinda sucky, it actually was pretty nice. we were in the country with some fresh air, releasing stress choppin wood...and yes i even got to feel a little bit more manly as i swung my ax and split the wood with a crack. a great bonding experience as I learned who my male classmates were.

but...it didn't stop there. after dinner, we had to mix up some clay and get it ready for the prof's use the next day. another few hours in the clay room churning out pounds and pounds (or should i say kilos and kilos) of clay.

but finally at 12:30 AM we were relieved of our duty and started our drive home. that night was hard. if i moved in my sleep my body reminded me that i was totally used and if i didn't move, the blisters on my hand (some of which were already popped and very raw) pulsed pain which surprisingly reverberated through my body. i had gotten great work-out...

but during that time, i thought that this was actually a good experience. i guess i felt like Peter (Office Space) in the last few minutes of the movie as he had left his job at a high-tech firm and was working as a construction-man. Fuckin'-A.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

...

So finally after some struggling to set my schedule straight, i now see that i'm going to be super busy with school. because i wasn't a ceramics major in college, i have to take some additional classes on top of my graduate load. this semester i will be taking three grad courses and 2 undergrad courses. this is going to be one crazy ride because to top it all off, it's in korean

now let me tell you...and to some (maybe most) this may not be a surpise, but living in korea and attending graduate school in korea is NOT the same thing. Going to school is WAAAAAY harder.

i think, though, that there will be a period of adjustment (funny how everything in life has a "period of adjustment") and i'll get used to the academic vocabulary that i currently scratch my head at.

thankfully i know what it is that i want to do...it just 1) how do i do it (literally where do i need to go and who do i need to talk to) and 2) how do i express these desires with word...korean words. this proves to me once again, life is indeed about the process. so here i go...i'm going to live it up!

Friday, March 03, 2006

First Day....

well today was the first day of class. i woke up with that oh so familiar feeling: nervousness, anxiety, etc. i just did not want to deal with sitting through another session of not understanding a damn thing. the bed seemed so more inviting. however, slowly, but very surely, i got myself ready for class and went early - just to make sure i would be on time. it was a good thing because the scheduled classroom changed. i wouldn't have known had i not gone to the admin bldg. this, of course, after i walked into what was very clearly a business lecture (i suppose that undergrad work wasn't a waste afterall).

but it's all good because after walking into the highschool, which is one bldg over from where i needed to be - it would have been nice if the school was separate from the university somehow...by...let's say...a fence? - i finally get to my class and i wait.

the prof shows up and i know who it is because i met prof lee before. but no intro. no "welcome to ceramics 101 i'm prof lee." everything just starts like as if we were well into the school year. did i miss something? perhaps the first day of school?

i don't think i mind not understanding korean that much. i kinda expected that to be the case. i just hoped i would be a bit more informed about what was going on here. like i said, it's bad enough that i'm just trying to figure stuff out since i don't know korean that well, but to further make it confusing by not providing information is a little tough.

ok...well class ends and we go to the studio to get our workspace setup and what have you. except for one small little problem. there just isn't enough space. apparently, more students were accepted into the program than the school could provide for. (it mu$t be the new building$ that they are building in front of the $chool.)

so what now? exactly...what now. they are in the process of adding more tables and stuff into the studio to facilitate more students so we'll see what happens then. oh boy...this is going to be an interesting two years is all i can say.

i hope day 2 is a little better....