WRAP UP!

Co-op Provides Hands-on Experience

By Jill Bugajski and Heather Birkhead

The exhibition Jin Soo Kim: Twenty Years, 1983-2003, now at the Chicago Cultural Center, is the culmination of a year of anticipation, reconstruction, and installation. The Cooperative Education Program (Co-op) partnered with Associate Professor in Sculpture Kim for more than a year in preparation for this retrospective. Co-op student assistants John Welter, Alexis Elton, Susan Dwyer, and Lynne Clarey helped Kim bring the show to fruition and gained much experience during the process.

John Welter worked as a Co-op student in Kim’s studio for the spring semester of 2002. Welter had the opportunity to participate in the formation of the show from its earliest stages — preparing and finalizingsculptures and installations that were to be included. Notetaking, brainstorming, and conceptualizing the space were all logistical tasks, but finalizing and wrapping sculptures was the order of the day. Welter said, “Wrap-ping the copper wire became the most methodical practice in my life. I would spend eight hours lost in the movement of my body, the bend of the wire, and the physical beauty of the sculpture. Seeing Jin Soo’s approach to art making and her enga-gement with the studio was both informative and inspiring. I left this job with a broader understanding of how artists can use their studio as creative fodder.”

Alexis Elton added: “You have to let go while in the obsessive wrapping. The repetition can be crazy if you don’t let yourself go into the movement.” During the summer semester 2002, Alexis was Kim’s Co-op student, and then returned this past winter session to assist with installation at the Cultural Center. We spoke with Elton, Dwyer, and Clarey at the Cultural Center before the opening of the show; all three continued to wrap small educational works that could be handled and explored by children visiting the exhibition.

The Twenty Years show is an auditory and visual feast. The sculptural works are dissonantly trapped between the sountrack of Kim’s “Tunnel” (2002) at the east end of the gallery, and the incessant clock- ticking component of the DVD installation at the west end. Young Sun Han, a former Co-op student, collaborated on the production of this soundscape. Time was critical: all Co-op students contributed more than 700 hours to make Jin Soo’s retrospective a success.

All concur that working on an exhibition with such heavy sculptures was physically draining, yet extremely rewarding. Having the opportunity to see the individual works recontextualized and evolved into a complex installation meant that perspectives were constantly shifting. Elton worked with Kim to begin the new site-specific piece “Prepositions” for this exhibition. All of the elements of “Prepos-itions” are objects or parts of works from past installments. As they visualized, developed, and accumulated components for this work, Elton was thinking of the relationship of deconstruction to construction: “We have all gotten physically and mentally stronger from doing this.”

Elton and Clarey prepared all the sculptures for transport from Kim’s Evanston studio: “It was a strange relationship after wrapping the work itself for hours, but then to have to wrap all of the work to protect it while it traveled to the Cultural Center seemed redundant though absolutely necessary to protect the work.”

As a Co-op studio assistant, Susan Dwyer began working in Kim’s studio in the fall semester of 2002, and continued through the winter semester to install the show. Dwyer literally worked from the ground up, from painting the studio floors, to raising Kim’s eight-foot tall sculptural walls, to seeing the suspension of works from the Cultural Center’s high ceiling. “For as many frustrations as I’ve had, and different work I have done, it has been a neat experience because of the wonderful mentoring relationship.” Dwyer is an experienced Co-op student. Before she worked with Kim, her first Co-op job was as an assistant to a painter. Susan emphasized the benefits of working with someone both within and outside of her field of study. For other students thinking about working as an artist’s assistant through the Co-op Program, Dwyer says: “Know what you want to get out of the artist before you go into the Co-op position, but be willing to be flexible and open to any possibilities.”

For information about Co-op, stop by the Co-op Program office in Sharp 707. Photograph courtesy of Co-op.