The Dawn of Embroidery Art
In her book Painting with a Needle (2003), she wrote: "Small needles and homespun threads proved to be powerful, life-changing tools that provided me and other Korean women with a viable vocation as well as an expressive and rewarding creative outlet... needlework carried me from a small Korean village of 30 families along a fascinating pathway across time and geographic region."
Chung is a renowned teacher of embroidery, and during the economically difficult period of South Korea's post-war reconstruction, She was able to harness this art form to positively impact many South Korean women's lives. In 1965 she founded her own institute, the International Embroidery School, and produced a new generation of Korean embroidery artists.
In 1967, under the auspices of the Ministry of Social Work, she established South Korea's first vocational embroidery center, The Women's Center. This school provided opportunities for numerous young women who needed gainful work.
In the same year, she was invited by the Japan Handicraft Association to present an exhibition of her and her students' embroidery at the prestigious Ikenobo Women's Finishing School in Japan. When Chung announced that entrance fee proceeds would be donated to provide embroidery supplies for schools teaching handicapped children in Tokyo, this was seen as remarkable gesture for a Korean woman, and the exhibition was extended with the financial support of a local hotel. Recognition such as this opened a valuable route to marketing the works created by her students, which in turn enabled the school to support itself financially.
Her mission to promote Korean embroidery led to her to Iran in 1968, where she exhibited her work in conjunction with the Tehran World's Fair. The exhibition of her embroidery in Cairo, Egypt, supported by the Korea Trade Association, also served to elevate South Korea's national prestige in this area of the world.
In the late 1960s, Chung was featured in a documentary produced by the South Korean television station KBS on young women of achievement. This publicity eventually led to more invitations to exhibit her embroidery abroad, from the U.S. to Japan and Europe, which garnered her international fame.
Read more about this topic: Young Yang Chung
Famous quotes containing the words dawn, embroidery and/or art:
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honour, and fictitious benevolence.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)