Yurim draws straight onto the surface of each piece. Life drawing in front of the living, breathing model joins the model's pose to the contoured surface of the piece.
I come from Korea, a country with a historic tradition of ceramics, where I was a fashion designer. By age 30 I had been designing high heeled shoes for over ten years in Seoul then in Tokyo and London. I emigrated to England in 2007, the first time I had set foot outside Asia. Learning English from scratch and being influenced by the radical change in culture I went back to being an artist, which was always my first calling. Starting with life drawing and experimenting with other media, I found myself drawn to my cultural roots in ceramics, mixing the two. In 2013 I made bowls and sketched live models drawing directly onto the contoured surfaces, combining the organic hand-moulded form of the bowl with the human form of the model. A couple of years later I began to add imagery to the pieces to extend the narratives that began with the poses, seeking inspiration from what I found captured in the drawings.
In Asian culture bowls are philosophically connected with humanity; for example in Korea we might talk about how big a bowl you have in your mind, so the bowl is holding all your knowledge and experience. I mould the bowls in my hands and I draw straight onto them, with no plan, never changing a line. My vases are like many bowls coming together inverted into sculptures. Drawing directly onto these with a life model, with a human in front of me, I can be led by their energy and afterwards see what of human life can fit into a bowl. What I found drove me to use imagery on top to draw out stories imagined from the lives.
