Kyoung Ae Cho

medium: textiles

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Paused 2022 Textiles	Paused (detail) 2022 Textiles	Excess IV 2015 Mixed media
Excess I - reworked 2019 Mixed media	Excess I - reworked (detail) 2019 Mixed media	M-a-r-k-i-n-g (wall) 2013 Textiles
M-a-r-k-i-n-g (detail) 2013 Textiles	He was formal 2020 Textiles	Worn 2022 Textiles
Worn (detail) 2022 Textiles

Contact information
Artist resides in: Milwaukee, WI
Email Address: cho@uwm.edu
Web site: www.kyoungaecho.com

Artist statement
Growing up in Korea, I learned to look at Nature with love and respect since we do not own nature, but we belong to nature. This thought has been deeply embedded in my creative research. With that, I am engaged in a conversation with nature. Each work produced is the result of an intimate dialogue between materials and I. The conversation may begin as I gather recycled organic matter and collect man-made objects of little value, or it may commence with a sudden discovery: of the beauty and sympathy in a pile of fallen crabapple flowers, or a weeded-out tree, or of the beauty and fragility in fallen leave, or of the potential of well-kept old clothing, for example. The collaboration proceeds through the slow, meditative accumulation of small gestures such as stitches and burn marks. Each meditative repetitive gesture is a part of the experience of merging the natural and the man-made, the physical and the spiritual. I consider this process as a ceremonial transition from one stage of being to another. Through preparing the materials, I am attentive to the ways they reveal, through shape, pattern, color, texture, scale, nature’s language of process and change. Patience and the passage of time enable me to discern my role in their evolution or completion. For me, a successful collaboration not only extends the natural processes inherent in the materials, prolonging their existence and meaning through a kind of rebirth, it also leaves me enriched.

Biography
Kyoung Ae Cho (b.1963, South Korea) earned her MFA (1992) from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and her BFA (1986) from Ducksung Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea. Cho has been exhibited in national and international venues and reviewed and published in various publications. Cho has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Lillian Elliott Award, the Quilt National Award of Excellence, the Pollock-Krasner Grant, the UWM Foundation and Graduate School Research Award, and Wisconsin Arts Board Award Fellowship. Cho is Professor of Art & Design at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.