Skip to main content

OM's Hanji studio ...

During our trip to South Korea we were invited to the home of Myong Sook OM, an outstanding Korean Hanji Artist who studied Fine Arts for 5 years in New York and she's currently a teacher to expats in Korea.
She's held several exhibitions of her work  and is involved in SIWA (Seoul International Women's Association). It was great to be able to sit and talk to her in English about her craft. At her OM's Hanji Studio in Seoul she conducts classes for expats who want to learn the craft and they come from countries all over the world. She's  held several exhibitions of her student's work over the last few years as well. 
"As an instructor, I unreservedly appreciate their(her students) exposed and unexposed efforts in transforming diverse experience and unique artistry into the forms of Korea's traditional Hanji. I also feel profound pride and sense of fulfillment in that their creative activity contributes to the globalization of Hanji craft." Myong Sook's words of introduction to the 2010 Global Hanji Work Exhibition, Seoul, Korea.
On arrival at her small apartment  we immediately recognized that she was a very humble lady who  has a strong desire to help other artists with similar artistic interests. She gave freely of her time and passion to discuss her work with us and made us feel extremely welcome in her home. 
Yellow lamp with water lilies
As she started to bring out her works of art we were struck by the fact that many of her lamps were large, including the Yellow lamp with water lilies (above) that's around 3' tall and the Large brown lamp which is around 4' 6" tall. She's also done a circular black lamp with waterlilies that stood about 4' tall and when the lights were switched on in these lamps the true genius of the placement of the papers was evident to us and we all went oooh!. Amazing work.
Black lamp detail
Detail of a leaf at the bottom of the lamp
Large lamp with water lilies
She works with naturally dyed papers only and uses a special technique of layering the paper to reach the desired effect of  different shades and thicknesses. 
One of her  interests is  designing waterlilies to place onto lamps, cabinets and boxes. I couldn't help  but think that this may have come from the many beautiful waterlily lamps in the Buddhist temples that are scattered all over the country.
She designs all her own cutouts, using her Fine Arts background,  then cuts them  by hand to produce stunning examples of this craft as seen in the small table below.
Small table with white cutouts


She also uses dyed paper to place behind some of the cutouts to give the effects of shading of the different elements.


We were truly honoured to be given this opportunity to meet up with her and to see first hand her amazing  hanji work .

I'm hoping to go back to Korea sometime soon to study with her for a while.



Labels:

Comments

  1. deniseApril 4, 2012 at 11:38 PM

    Beautiful Jan! Am sure you had an awesome, memorable trip.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MonicaApril 5, 2012 at 11:57 AM

    Absolutely amazing and beautiful work! I especially love the water lilies and how she has layered them. I'm just in awe!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hanji HappeningsApril 11, 2012 at 5:37 PM

    So were we. I have plenty more photos to show you when we meet up ...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lotus symbol in Korean culture .....

In traditional Korean Hanji art you can see many different designs of plants, animals, letters and insects. I'm sure you've wondered what they all symbolise as they are repeated so often and in many different ways.  In this post I just want to take a brief look at the lotus plant and what it symbolises for the Korean people. I've used this design on a few articles but I never really knew the full meaning of what it represented until I started doing some research for my book.  Even though many of us aren't Korean we can still use these designs and in so doing, translate a deeper meaning to our articles. Here are a just a few of my favourites from the easiest to the more difficult to cut out.                         The lotus flower symbolises creation, birth, liveability and reproduction and therefore it's one of the most  important symbols in both Korean culture and its traditional religions. In both Confucianism and Buddhism
3 comments
Read more

The Buddhist symbol, Hanji & Korean culture ....

When selecting designs for my Hanji pieces I tend to make stylistic choices as to what will look best on each piece but the Korean designs all have very deep symbolic meanings.  None more than the Buddhist swastika (manja) design. ‘Manja’ (만, Man is “卍” and 만자, Manja literally means “letter Man”) is also called Srivatsalksana in Sanskrit.  It is one of the thirty-two (32) marks of excellence of the Buddha and is said to exist on his hands, feet, hair and waist.                         For those of us in the West this is often confused with the German Nazi swastika symbol but in fact it's been  around for about three thousand years.  The swastika is an equilateral cross with arms bent at right angles and all in the same direction, usually to the right, or clockwise. It's a symbol of prosperity and good fortune and it originally represented the revolving sun, fire, or life. The word swastika is derived from the Sanskrit swastika which means, "conducive to well
Post a Comment
Read more

Online Hanji paper store, in English .....

I'm really pleased to be able to share with you this website where you can order a variety of Hanji papers from Korea and it's all in English !!!  The store is based in Daejon, Korea.   HAMINBRIDGE ( Thehanji ) was established by Moonyang Park in 1983. It's a family owned 2nd generation  business and they have a factory in Junju.  They also have a factory in China where some of the paper is made. The website is at www. thehanji.com and it provides a selection of specialty Hanji paper (Korean paper) and products.   I ordered some papers from them recently  to see what it was like and they were extremely efficient in dealing with  the order and it was here in the UAE within 5 days so I was really impressed. The prices were good and they even have some on special, the paper is beautiful and the ease of ordering was amazing.   They do sell rolls of paper, traditional papers and lanterns but overall I did think the range was a bit limited for what I wa
6 comments
Read more