Tell me about yourself? My name is Suggun Cho, I’m a senior this year. I lived in South Korea until I graduated elementary, and went to Singapore and graduated middle school there. I came back to Korea when I was a sophomore. I like to draw and play video games.
I’ve seen a lot of awesome art of yours, who or what is your biggest artistic influence?
I find Korean culture very inspirational, they are very interesting to study and to look at. Asian traditional legends especially, dragons, lions, are all very fascinating. I will find articles about them and study. I am influenced by Lee Sea Hyun. I was honored to meet him with the ICSU art department team!”
Can you please describe your artwork.
This one is called the “Smiling Mask”. As you can see, the mask itself is always smiling, but there are more emotions to it. Us humans have more than one emotion, and that’s what makes us unique. You could see the colorful tears that are coming out from the mask, they represent anger, sadness, loneliness, tiredness… The background on the bottom is dark blue, and it illustrates that someone is wearing the mask, if you look at it closely, it’s a shoulder.
That’s fascinating Suggun! Wow, I agree, we have many different emotions and all are important. When we are happy we smile, sad we cry, tired we sleep. I like this a lot.
Thank you.
Can you please tell me about another piece?
The one next to it, its “Darcy”. I created it to dedicate it to Ms. Lockman, one of my favorite teachers. I gifted my artwork to teachers, Mr. Padgett got the “Smiling Mask”, and a drawing to Mr. Forster. “Darcy” was my class project, and I was very excited at the beginning, but as I made progress looking at how it's turning out, I realized I like 2D art better, haha. So yeah, I chose Ms. Lockman because she was a good coach and teacher. I was going to give this to her, but she left too early. When she comes to visit, I will give it to her.
Awesome! Last but not least,what is your future goal in art? I want to get into Disney animation. To work on projects about Korean animation. To spread Korean traditional things in a broader view. These days Korea is famous for K-pop and Korean food, all these things are known world wide, but there isn’t a dedicated movie animation about it. So I want a story that is mainly about Korea itself. Ideas on the animations from famous Korean tales “The tale of Sim Chong” (심청이) and “Hong Gil-dong” (홍길동).
Thank you Suggun! I like your ideas about Korean animations, and I hope to see you working for Disney in the future.