Saturday, November 7, 2009

Studio Visit: Moon Byung-Sik

While waiting for the arrival of our most recent family member Juno and I have been keeping busy by visiting some of the amazing potters this region of Korea has to offer.  Yesterday I looked up a potter, Moon Byung-Sik, we had met a few years back at his exhibiton in Seoul.  It turned out that his home/studio is only a 10 minute drive from where we are staying at my mother-in-law's home.  Mr. Moon is in his early 30's and works in translucent porcelain at cone 8.  His work is defined by it's simplicity and strength of form in contrast with the amazing skill necessary to make such forms from such a difficult material.  The pots in the pictures below represent one day of production for Mr. Moon.  



I was most impressed with his ability to balance his whole price range of work, from tiny $5 traditional cobalt painted porcelain animal figures to 4 foot wide platters with meticulous inlay/carved patterns.  


The few pictures I was able to snap were with my phone camera.  I plan to return to his studio in the coming weeks as he has invited me to work with him in the studio.  I'll be sure to get some quality pix of his finished work.


For those of you going to Philidelphia for NCECA Keep an eye out for Mr. Moon, if I understood him correctly, he is planning to teach a workshop in conjunction with an exhibition at this years conference (more details to come when I have them).  Also, I hope to arrange some other workshop locations for him if his travel plans allow.

4 comments:

FetishGhost said...

I suddenly feel very, very inadequate.
I'm really beginning to groove with that feeling.

Anonymous said...

i'm with mr. fetishghost... very inadequate indeed, amazing amount of production. would love to see some finished translucent porcelain work.

ttogarii@naver.com said...

so nice!!
I heard about him before. my friend live in near to Mr.Moon's studio. also he will going to USA for demonstration with my friend in April. I hope to go there with them and I want to see NCECA. but I can't go to see there because my wife is going to have a second child
So,I'm very impressive that your Onggi demo. in 'Obuza' I was learn to Onggi technique in 'Jeolado-Boseung'(south-west of Korea) during 2years(2000~2002) after graduate.
Glad to see you& Heesoo lee's blog!
Best regards!

thegypsie said...

Do you happen to have studio hours and location for Mr. Moon's studio? I hope to visit some day but I am having a hard time finding a location for his studio.