Fine arts students are encouraged to seek specializations within their major, which leads students to apply for one of nine BFA programs.
Won-Hee Parkby is an international student from South Korea who just finished her third semester in the BFA painting program.
Despite having an emphasis in painting, Won has become increasingly involved in the ceramics department.
She said ceramics satisfies her in a way painting can’t.
When working on canvas, Parkby said she considers herself to be more of an abstract artist.
However, she found she can create more representational pieces when working in clay, like her series of figurative human busts she paints and carves as a means of abstraction.
The series was inspired by a project in her 300-level ceramics course where she recreated one of the cloud-covered heads in Salvador Dali’s 1947 painting, “Three Sphinxes of Bikini.”
Constructing this head presented many challenges that motivated Parkby to try to perfect her process.
She looked to other figurative ceramicists for help like Ah Xian, a Chinese ceramicist making porcelain busts with decorative Chinese designs.
Christyl Boger, an IU ceramics professor, was also a technical asset. Parkby said Boger helped guide her through various problems she would encounter when building her busts.
Although she is working with clay in the ceramics studio, Parkby said she tries to keep painting in mind.
“Painting helps me develop a sense of surface and color that I can apply in ceramics,” she said.
She said she also likes the physical activity required for working in ceramics.
Parkby is now able to physically construct the lights and shade that she has previously painted.
Physically experiencing her work in this way gives her a kind of pleasure she doesn’t get with painting, she said.
Yet, Parkby said she applies new discoveries made in the ceramics studio to her paintings.
“Ceramics construction work and working with a 3-D object helps me get a sense of real space, shading and light relationships,” she said.
In the future Parkby plans to attend graduate school and could see herself eventually teaching art at a university.
However, she said her growing love for ceramics is now causing her to question if she ultimately wants to be a painter or a change course for a ceramics career.
