Yoonjee Kwak (b. 1989, South Korea) makes sculptural vessels to represent human beings as iconic symbols from Korean culture. Yoonjee’s interactive conversation with the clay is vital to her process — she slowly builds up clay coils from the bottom, allowing her hand marks to remain on the surface. Yoonjee earned her MFA in ceramics at the School for American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 2015 and her BFA in ceramics and glass at Hong-Ik University in Seoul, South Korea. She was a resident artist and taught ceramics classes at RIT from 2014– 2017, and recently completed a two-year long residency at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana. In 2016, she was named an Emerging Artist in Ceramics Monthly magazine. She most recently served as an interim professor at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Aspen, Colorado.