KIM DONG WAN

Dongwan Kim was born in the year of the Monkey in Korea.
Those born in the year of the monkey are believed to be dexterous; so was him since he was a child.
Such interest in arts and crafts continued growing, and he decided to major in Craft&Design at university where he had his first encounter with glass melting in the furnace.
Mesmerized by the image of a beaming orange light amid extreme heat, he was determined to continue onto graduate school.
Working as an assistant for a year at his alma (there was temporary pause in graduate school admission), he first came across ottchil and grew curious of what the material could bring out when applied to glass.
His master’s thesis “A study on work applying ottchil to glass” was the culmination of pursuing such interest in combining Lacquer with the glass.
After earning his MFA, he spent a year as a studio assistant, then another year as an artist-in-residence at Korea National University of Arts.
Now running a studio in Seoul, he continues to explore what glass and Lacquer have to offer along with the aforementioned memories encapsulated in the lacquer’s infinite layers.