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March 2007 News
So Yeon Park: Storytelling and Listening
Storytelling and Listening is a three-stage fiber and performance project by So Yeon Park. Working with marginalized populations in Canada the United States and India Ms. Park will facilitate a Storytelling project leading to the production of large quilts and video documentations of participants telling their life stories. The quilts and videos will form an installation to be exhibited in Seoul Korea’s Contemporary Art Museum in 2008. The first stage of the project was facilitated in conjunction with visual art thematic new work residency and storytelling residency at the Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada with a population of indigenous people. The second stage of the project now in progress Ms. Park is working with a community of homeless children through the Office of Homeless Liaison in Kansas City, Kansas and Chameleon Arts and Youth Development in Kansas City Missouri. The third stage will take place in Mumbi India in the summer of 2007.
The goal of the project is to provide creative and expressive opportunities for underserved populations. So Yeon Park will help the youth create drawings and record their life stories. Their drawings will be turned into quilt sections using digital embroidery to produce a large collaborative quilt. The completed quilt will be used as a stage/performance for the children to tell their life stories and have them recorded as video performances. So Yeon Park will be meeting with the children over the next 4 months at Chameleon Arts and youth Development www.chameleon-ayd.org . The work in progress will be in the Chameleon black box theater space for the Southern Graphics Council Conference March 21-25 2007.
For more information or interviews please contact Hugh Merrill at 816-686-8626,
So Yeon Park is an interdisciplinary performance artist who was born and raised in Korea. She received her M.F.A. in Art from Ohio State University, her second B.F.A. in sculpture/ceramics from California College of Arts and Crafts, and her first B.F.A. in arts and crafts from Seoul Women's University, Seoul, Korea.
With her eclectic background, in visual art, performance art and time-based media, Park established herself in the collaborative lab projects, various solo and site –specific performances. She involved in film shoots-on-location, theatrical and photographic research, software programming, digital editing, stage rehearsals that combined live dance-theatre, music, visual sculpture, film projections and online telepresence. She also participated in a series of interactive/distributed performance with various partner teams (AdaPT) in the US and Latin America. Her current research is mainly about the social role of performance and cultural production in public space. She has been experimenting with the creation of public settings that break through cultural boundaries and promote sharing and understanding among people with diverse backgrounds. Since 2003, She has held several community based pubic performances such as “Four Caskets Project” at the Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio, “Interfaith Chanting/praying Ceremony” presented by Fado Performance, Inc. in Toronto, Ontario and recently, “Story Telling and Listening”in conjunction with visual art thematic new work residency and storytelling residency at the Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada.
Southern Graphics Council Excellence in Teaching Award
The Southern Graphics Council annually selects an esteemed artist/educator who has made a lifetime contribution to Printmaking and education to receive the Excellence in Teaching Award. Hugh Merrill will receive the award at the 35th Annual Southern Graphics Council Conference hosted by a consortium of universities, colleges and arts institutions in Kansas City March 21-25, 2007.
Since 1976, Hugh Merrill has taught in the Printmaking Program at the Kansas City Art Institute, collaborating with other excellent faculty to develop an internationally-renowned undergraduate program noted for embracing cross-disciplinary and digital applications alongside classic print media such as stone lithography, letterpress, silkscreen and etching.
Since the early 1990s, Hugh Merrill has been a seminal contributor to the revitalization of contemporary Printmaking and pedagogy. He is widely credited with helping redefine Printmaking as a more expansive cross-disciplinary set of artistic and educational practices. Through his published articles and panel presentations, Merrill extended the role of printmaking in art and education to the College Art Association, the Mid America Print Council and the international Impact Printmaking Conference. Merrill has been invited as an artist, community activist and printmaker to discuss his views and ideas on the role Print plays in culture and education to more than 50 universities and colleges internationally.
Hugh Merrill is also the Community and Professional Arts Director at Chameleon
