Chunghi Choo Volume 44.4
NECKPIECE of electroformed copper (silver-plated), forged silver, agate, garnet, 34.9 × 10.8 centimeters, 1971.
In the recent publication Chunghi Choo and Her Students, Contemporary Art and New Forms in Metal by Jane C. Milosch, editor, with several notable contributors, I was excited to learn about Choo’s extensive career as an artist and dedicated teacher who shared her knowledge and skills with her students over four decades. A Korean-American artist (b. 1938), Choo’s early life in Korea set the stage for her evolving artistic development. Her intense study of painting, calligraphy, ancient philosophy, world religions, and Eastern and Western aesthetics while attending the Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul (1957–1961, BFA) prepared Choo for graduate study at Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan), attending from 1962 to 1965. Choo’s broad objective to expand her understanding of craft materials and techniques led her to concentrated studies with Cranbrook’s artist-in-residence faculty: majoring in metalsmithing and jewelry with Richard Thomas, and minoring in ceramics with Maija Grotell and weaving with Glen Kaufman. Choo credits Thomas as teaching students “that work must be well designed, and that the craftsmanship must be impeccable.”
At Cranbrook, she thrived in the learning environment where the artist-faculty worked along with their students in the studios. This model resonated with Choo, as did Cranbrook’s curriculum, which emphasized design principles, material learning and studying traditional techniques alongside the vigorous exploration of new ideas and technologies. This learning paradigm prepared Choo to accept the position of Head of the Metalsmithing and Jewelry Department at the University of Iowa (Iowa City), for which she was recruited in 1968. She remained until her retirement in 2014, launching and advancing the metals program throughout her tenure of forty-six years. Adding perspective and validation to Choo’s teaching methods is a section of the book by Kate Bonansinga that documents the narratives and artwork of thirty-two former students, surveying their technically innovative output under Choo’s tutelage and their continued growth as professional artists.
TWIST AND FOLD (Neckpiece) of silver, agate, emerald, 39.4 centimeters long, 1996. Collection of Kay Le Roy. Photograph by Peter Krumhardt.
Choo’s early career inclusion in significant American craft exhibitions brought national recognition of her work in textiles and metals; notably the selection of her large silk tie-dyed wall hangings juried into the “Young Americans 1969” exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York (now Museum of Arts and Design), and two electroformed copper sculptures for “Forms in Metal: 275 Years of Metalsmithing in America,” also at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in 1975. From the late 1960s onward, Choo devoted her creative energies to developing a diverse body of metalwork, including hollowware, translucent metal mesh baskets, tableware, free-standing sculptures, and sculptural wearable jewelry, demonstrating the artist’s refined design approach. Visionary curator of crafts Paul J. Smith championed her work as “original forms imbued with a high level of technical finish that complement their formal elegance.”
Searching for a distinctive voice, Choo discovered that electroforming presented an innovative approach to form, material and process beyond conventional metalsmithing methods. Simplified, electroforming is a plating process that deposits metal around a molded object, usually wax, that is submerged into an acid bath of copper sulfate, among other additives, and is electrically charged. This disposition enables soft, expressive, clean-lined shapes to be created with less labor and weight, which is particularly beneficial in jewelry and large-scale hollowware. Choo had studied electroforming techniques with Stanley Lechtzin (b. 1936) at a summer session in 1971 at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. A fellow Cranbrook graduate, Lechtzin had founded the jewelry and metals program at Tyler in 1962 and was the leading pioneer in electroformed jewelry. Inspired by the initial training, Choo became proficient in the technique and created animated, flowing designs of electroformed brooches and neckpieces set with gemstones, some with patterned surfaces that echoed textiles.
Receiving a grant from the University of Iowa, Choo installed an exceptionally large electroforming tank in 1973 (250 gallons). This allowed her to adapt the industrial applications of electroforming to the studio environment and plate forms of considerable scale. Ultimately, electroforming expanded her and the student’s range of skills through experimentation and collaboration as they developed processes and principles of design around the new technology. On the importance of this technique to the study of metals, Choo remarked, “Electroforming allows for unlimited expression in forming metals. It lifted some of the technical limitations in metalworking that existed in the past … The electroforming process permits the artist to make pieces of substantial size and unusual design, having only a fraction of the weight of traditionally cast or fabricated metal. The process is also quicker and makes multiple editions possible.
Peace Lily exemplifies the possibilities achievable in hollowware through electroforming: the fluid dynamism of a continuous line floating effortlessly upward terminates in a stylized furled leaf, full of grace and reduced to pure form. Its complex undulating volumes are smooth and reflective, guiding the eye to the vessel’s opening, which is integral to the form, suggesting an opening bloom. Additionally, once the prototype was perfected in form and execution, Choo made an edition of thirty-five. Peace Lily is characteristic of the signature sculptural vessels in public and private collections for which Choo is internationally recognized.
Viewed as small-scale sculpture, jewelry offered Choo a shorthand method of testing new materials and methods and provided the optimal platform for class demonstrations. Also, bold gestures could be tested before committing to larger scaled or finished work. In 1975, Choo was granted a research leave to investigate new techniques for “Plating Metal on Fabrics and Electroformed Body Jewelry in Costume Design”. The research time enabled her to explore the integration of textiles with metals, producing full-body adornment in wearable art. Part of the 1960s and 1970s zeitgeist, jewelry as body sculpture surfaced in the work of artists/jewelers who viewed the body as territory for vanguard sculptural statements. This was fertile ground for experimentation and an apt design challenge for Choo. However, after considering conservation requirements, Choo decided not to pursue the full-body metal and textile combinations. Learning from this exercise, she intuitively applied jewelry’s potential for body engagement and movement in her later neckpieces: Magnolia (1996) and Twist and Fold (1996) encircle the body with a sensuous line of silver, inscribing torso, neck and shoulder in their elegant arc. The focal point of Magnolia is its fiber flower, strategically positioned near the shoulder to suggest a real flower with a scent that the wearer might enjoy. Twist and Fold conveys a different narrative, not botanical but textual: the seemingly spontaneous silver loops and arabesques recall the natural flow of calligraphy, an art form Choo vigorously practiced to advance her skill at “harmonizing the hand and eye.” Choo acknowledges: “I believe that the sweeping movements of the brush in calligraphy have influenced my work and give it a flowing line of energy.”
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Choo introduced methods of coloring metal and surface embellishment into her work and, by extension, to her students, when she equipped the University of Iowa studio with the machinery and materials required to teach traditional processes of enameling and patination techniques, as well as powder coating and anodizing, advanced technologies newly adapted from an industrial to an educational setting. These techniques enabled artists to colorize their metal pieces and, through the coating process, prevent oxidation and corrosion to the surface. Choo’s brooch, Composition with Cube (1993), of anodized aluminum with an inset of an 18-karat gold cube and emerald, demonstrates the richness of color attainable through the anodizing technology applied to aluminum, an especially receptive metal. Choo fabricated this piece using silent metal forming, re-invigorating a convolution technique she taught her students: to fold, roll, and bend a flat piece of metal into a three-dimensional form entirely by hand. Here, exploring colors and shapes in an abstract configuration, Choo deploys a purple color field as the backdrop for the drama: negative space is inserted between elements and is pierced by an intersecting line of metal that sweeps from back to front, connecting the parts, partially framing the emerald, and leading the eye to step off the surface of the brooch and trail onto the wearer’s garment: affirming Choo’s ongoing consideration of jewelry’s interaction with the body.
Further, in 2003, Choo took a research leave, “Creative Work: Painting on Metalwork,” to investigate industrial polyurethane and acrylic lacquers, newly invented color-coating techniques used by automotive body shops and in other manufacturing processes. Choo established collaborations with industrial businesses to experiment with these new paint applications for her artwork, sharing the discoveries and results with her students. Soon thereafter, Choo applied acrylic lacquer paints to her vessels and jewelry, using the lush colors to amplify form or spotlight surfaces.
For Choo, making jewelry has always been a fluid exchange of ideas between small-scale sculptures and larger sculptural works. Explorations of new materials and techniques could flow from one artwork to another, cross-pollinating concepts across disciplines from textiles to hollowware to jewelry. In the 1980s, Choo invented a technique of cutting, folding, layering, and colorizing wire mesh that presented “unlimited possibilities” in achieving vibrant woven metal forms with painterly abstractions. This exchange is profoundly revealed in the origami-like Butterfly Basket (2013) and the Korean Landscape brooch (2014), constructed of bronze mesh and metallic foil. In addition to their materiality and construction, the underlying inspiration for the shifting palette and pattern derives from Choo’s early tie-dyed wall hangings where bold, saturated colors intersect and diverge in waves of movement. In Choo’s work, this dialogue between materials feels organic and progressive, as if each new piece builds upon a foundation of ideation and innovation, extending the aesthetics of metalwork.
SUGGESTED READING
Milosch, Jane C. (ed.) Chunghi Choo and Her Students: Contemporary Art and New Forms in Metal. Stuttgart, Germany: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2022.
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Chunchi Choo was one of the two recipients of the Smithsonian Visionary Award in Metal in 2023.
Jo Lauria is a Los Angeles-based curator, author, and educator with a background in American modern and contemporary decorative arts, design and crafts. Through her exhibitions and publications, she promotes a non-hierarchical approach to art disciplines and sees beauty in all media. Researching the metalwork of artist Chunghi Choo and her contribution to the jewelry field allowed for a deep dive into a topic about which she is passionate: jewelry as wearable sculpture. Ultimately, Lauria was impressed with Choo’s mastery of her medium and dedication toward teaching, transferring her knowledge and skills to generations of students.
