Dankook Uni 2012 Ceramic Arts Graduation Exhibition

This winter Nara and I headed out to Insadong 인사동 which is this old amazing area of Seoul for mainly cultural activities, traditional tea houses, Korea related tourist goodies, and tons of galleries!  It is a really fun location that I need to feature here in the near future~ it is a bit far from my apartment so I do not venture out to it nearly enough!

The reason for today’s visit was to check out Dankook University’s Ceramic Arts Graduation Exhibition because Nara’s cousin “Diana” had her thesis on display!   She decided to do some hanging fine art for this project vs functional pieces, the colors and textures came out so pretty! To roll ceramic so thinly like that must have taken some time *_*

♥ ♥ ♥

Ah I felt so old seeing her all done with school, when I first met her she must have been only 12 and we would play 가위-바위-보!  When she first started her ceramic major she made me a beautiful bowl that I keep on my dresser for jewelry!

The art overall from this graduating class was very cute, most likely because more than half of the class was actually female! I’m not sure if it is a coincidence or not, but most of the fine artists shows we attend are predominantly female here in Korea~ perhaps it is harder for men to have that kind of freedom to pursue arts here due to pretty intense social expectations that are placed on them in terms of education, income, and success….  ANYWAY, just a thought! So yeah, lets look at some pretty pieces we also happened to spot at the show!

Bunnies~ Some with rainbow heart eyes ♥

Another student made these beautiful teapots sculpted to look like pillows and rope.  The sculpting on the rope was extremely impressive, I had to get close to check if it was ceramic!

the whole set was a lot of fun stacked up, a really creative idea!

When we go to Doll Free Market we always see plenty of custom sculpts figures being sold, it seems to be a popular crafting pastime or even small business here. This student show had a few doll sculpts, but these are my favorite in terms of color and cuteness!

Another student had a wall of really beautiful horse figures all hand painted with fun designs.  My photo does not do these justice, I honestly wish she had just had them all out on a table in one massive cluster like the bunnies!

If she sold them piece by piece I think I would have bought at least 5 for my shelves… what is not to like about rainbow painted horses? Ah when I type “painted horses” all I can think about is “Silence of the lambs” now, dang.

Kitty Disney Princesses? Sounds good to me!

Garden buddies~

Really beautiful pine cone sculptures and a piece that I swear looks like the Krang Technodrome from Ninja Turtles.

Mermaid tea set! My Mother would love this one I think!

Really fun dot tea set that had pieces curved to fit into each other for display/storage

The whole area seemed to be rented out for small student shows that night~ so we spent a nice evening with Nara’s cousins just walking around and looking at all the work.

Spotted a majestic kitty just hanging outside of one of the old buildings.

Diana hooked us up with an artbook they had printed for the show to sell and be a kind of yearbook for the class~ it was REALLY nice! Her page came out beautiful and they captured the spirit of the art so well.

I am actually so glad we got this because the location they had the show in was really hard to photograph and some of the arrangements looked a bit boring when I snapped them, but wow~ this book they had made is a really nice hardcover and each piece has been professionally set up and photographed. I’ll share a few more pages for the curious…

Nara and I love this cloud tea set! The plates and cups are especially fun ^^

All in all it was a very impressive student show, I did not expect to see so many things I actually wanted to own haha!  We are so proud of Diana and hope she goes on to do wonderful things and keep doing what she loves.

Have you been to any similar art shows before? What was your favorite piece from this show? Comment below!