Kyoung Ae Cho

The beauty that Kyoung Ae Cho's work attains is a source of considerable pleasure as well as a locus of attention promoting a feeling of centeredness in the viewer – an experience that continues to be desired by many though it is increasingly rare in a culture spinning with information and spectacle. For Cho, the material and process influences of craft are fundamental to her way of working for she developed as an artist from a fiber background. After traditional training in her native South Korea , where her education stressed technique and surface decoration, she relocated to the United States , earning an MFA in fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art.

 Cho has drawn upon her experience at the cusp of Eastern and Western culture to create simple, meditative works incorporating natural elements in which humanity's hand is evident but always respectful. Cho has made use of possibilities opened up by contemporary art and wedded them to fundamental elements and approaches from her fiber training, while furthering metaphors drawn from nature. The result is a dizzying pas de deux of artist and nature, part op art and part nature study. Despite man's tampering, Cho suggests, the phyusical world remains transcendent.

 Because Cho's art evinces a concern with nature, it can be interpreted in relation to the growing field of environmental art – including Helen and Newton Harrison, Agnes Denes, and Mel Chin – which means to raise public awareness of and sensitivity toward nature. Through representing and incorporating nature, Cho is suggesting that an understanding of nature can offer us profound metaphors of stability and change, and of constancy and renewal that can enable us to more fully realize ourselves and our place in the world.

 Excerpted from Rearrangements by Robert Raczka, Associate Professor of Art and Gallery Director, Allegheny College , Meadville , PA.