GALLERY GUIDE
Korean-American artist Hyunsuk Erickson explores ideas of materiality, resourcefulness, and identity in her whimsical installation Thingumabob Society. Comprised of multi-colored, organic forms that tower in size, spring from the wall, or gather in groups, Erickson’s oddly shaped and playful sculptures suggest sprouting seeds or family groupings.
The artist creates her Thingumabobs by merging sculpture and craft traditions. Using plastic, yarn, and found fabric, she crochets and weaves over and around more durable materials such as ceramic to produce animated and joyful forms.
Drawing upon memories of her family’s farm in Korea with those of motherhood and family in the United States, Erickson’s creations explore the cyclical nature of life, the waste of consumer culture, and the hybrid nature of identity. In Thingumabob Society, the artists fashions an imaginative and hopeful space that invite us to collectively reflect on relationships—between nature, culture, and ourselves.
— Heather Ferrell, Curator and Director of ExhibitionsARTIST STATEMENT
My life is filled with a plethora of opportunities for material resourcefulness. On my parent’s farmland during my youth in Korea, we made use of the materials we had available to us. The materials I used for my arts education were often the same as those used for craft making and then home making as I matured during motherhood.
From an early age, I searched for various objects; broken ceramics, glass, bottle caps, weeds, sand and soils, all to create an imaginary world for myself. I vividly recall the beautiful sunshine reflecting off of my parent’s garden fence made of empty bottles, inverted and placed into the soil. We used plastic containers to form pencil holders, soap containers, plant pots, and much more. I learned from this and found I could create human figures with sand next to the stream.
Soil, with the application of water, were the materials of choice to build the walls of three-dimensional house diagrams and other home goods. As a farm girl, I watched plants sprout, produce flowers and fruits as they transitioned though their respective life cycles. I was most intrigued in watching dried seeds eventually sprout in their quest to reach maturity. Interestingly, my parents would wrap dry seeds in a blanket and then leave them on our warm floor. I watched the seeds as they sprouted, placing them into rich soil to grow and achieve their fruitful life.
The physical growth of these seeds, which required the proper environment and a relationship between nature and manufactured objects, is magical to me and inspires my work today. I seek to create tension and ambiguity by combining a peculiar mixture of materials, like those I found in my childhood.
I crochet and weave over hard materials (wood, plastic, ceramic, 3D printed forms) with yarn and found fabric to build structures, which I have named “Thingumabob.” This Thingumabob is a product of my cultural hybridity as I grapple with the tension of the synthesis and resistance of both the Korean and American forces that influence my life as I continuously adapt. The Thingumabob is growing, morphing from a few structures into multiple families, and now, into a collective society as I create more and more. The Thingumabob is a collective reflection of my lived cultural experience.
I create this work with the hopes of participating in an act of social healing by synthesizing natural and unnatural materials into their own unified creation. My installation, Thingumabob Society, is a shrine of wisdom, healing, and hope for the culture where I live including the challenges posed by materialism and a post-pandemic world.
— Hyunsuk Erickson Thingumabobs, 2022BIOGRAPHY
Through an imaginative interdisciplinary practice that includes painting, sculpture, and craft traditions such as crochet and ceramics, Hyunsuk Erickson seeks a harmonious balance amidst the confluence of industry, self-identity, and cultural hybridity. She expresses this through her inventive use of materials and is especially interested in the combination of the intangible and tangible, the spiritual and physical realms. Hyunsuk’s colorful, biomorphic sculptures and room-size installations are simultaneously playful and critical as they situate groups and families of forms amidst an imaginary world. Her experience of American materialism informs her efforts to incorporate upcycled materials, while opening up conversations about today’s culture of consumerism.
Hyunsuk Erickson earned a BFA degree from Cheongju University in South Korea and another BFA from University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She is currently completing her MFA at American University, Washington, D.C. Hyunsuk Erickson resides with her husband in Brandywine, Maryland.