
Hoseok Youn Glass Artist
Clip: Season 3 Episode 5 | 5m 53sVideo has Closed Captions
Hoseok Youn Glass Artist – Kansas City, MO
Hoseok Youn is a Glass Artist and Instructor who has taken his passion for toys and glass to help him create fantastical blown glass sculptures.
Making is a local public television program presented by KMOS

Hoseok Youn Glass Artist
Clip: Season 3 Episode 5 | 5m 53sVideo has Closed Captions
Hoseok Youn is a Glass Artist and Instructor who has taken his passion for toys and glass to help him create fantastical blown glass sculptures.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(gentle thoughtful music) - To be honest, when I went to college, I did not know that my department teaches glass, I did not know.
And so at the first day of class, I finally realized that, "Oh, they teach glass here."
And when I tried something, to play with glass the first time, at the first moment, I just had this kinda like very clear, clean feeling, "Wow, I'm gonna go for this."
That's how I actually got into glass.
I work with the clear glass mostly because it's also kind of like related to my concept.
And when glass blowing happened the first time, they create this very crystallic clear glass, which is called a crystallo in Italian.
And I am working with traditional elements and tryin' to work with original designs and stemwares from the past.
And that's kinda like, I want to stay with the clear glass to show my work.
(gentle rhythmic music) My figures are actually constructed by this, so all traditional glasswares.
I use those techniques and try something different way, or my own unique way to create my own work.
That's kinda like basically how I do it.
So like briefly, the process will be like, I will deconstruct this traditional goblets or any glasswares.
I will deconstruct them, split them into all individual part, and then I will use those parts to transform into the figurative designs.
Blow.
I usually tell people like, "I make goblets, but I don't make goblets."
And they go like, "What are you talking about?"
(laughing) And then I show them and then they go like, "Ah."
(laughing) It's kinda like complicated how to describe my work, it's not easy.
And I try not to tell people that it's exactly a toy or it's exactly a transformer.
No, I don't really try to tell them because I want to lead their own imaginations, and let them imagine whatever they want to think.
So it could be transformer, it could be Gundam, it could be toy.
But also, like since you mentioned about this toy, is like toy is a big part of my life actually.
It's like most of time of my childhood, I spent with the toys.
And that's why I believe that I have this ability, how I see things and how I create things, design things, because I have all this memories of playing with the toys, you know, making toys, playing with the toys.
I have all this data in my head, and I can use that to create my own work.
(gentle rhythmic music) Sometimes I let people touch it, you know, so they can kinda feel the textures or this like lines.
But so far, a lotta people, they would just step back.
Some people, they even get nervous, you know, they get anxious, they start to breathe hardly, you know?
Like, that's what usually happens when they see my work.
But I mean, I really want people, you know, just like playing with the toys, I really want people try touch my work, and I'm trying so far.
(laughing) (gentle oscillating music) Recently, so far, I've been making large scale of my pieces, and they take months to make one.
This guy right here, that took almost eight months to finish it.
So for large scales, it's a quite different process.
For large scales, I will have to make all the parts separately and then cold assemble them later.
But if I'm going for like small scale, like a little bigger than hand size, I can actually finish in glass blowing studio which takes about four hours.
In glass, there's always a debate between craft and the fine art.
You know, people will always just debate like, "Is a vessel or cup?
They're handmade, but are they art?"
you know?
And we're also kinda like stuck right now to develop our creativity, or trying to make something new.
We're kinda like stuck there.
So I really wanted to show people that like, even with the craft forms, like functional forms, functional pieces, we can make something new, we can make something different, we can make something unique, cool.
That's actually a really important part of why I blow glass.
Why am I working with glass?
And that's kinda like one of the reason, a very important reason.
And it's for community, it's not just for myself.
(gentle rhythmic music)
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipMaking is a local public television program presented by KMOS