Premio Combat Prize

Hee Sook Kim’s work includes plants with healing powers, spiritual energy, childhood memories of my grandmother’s garden and mine, and life itself: birth, struggles, emotions, cultural experiences, death. Flower imagery conveys nature’s spirituality and feminine aspects of her life. She also uses images to explore the cultural exchange between Eastern and Western cultures. Intimate visual spaces conjured by spirituality invite viewers to a special journey: into an imaginary land, the work.Hee Sook Kim earned her MFA and BFA from Seoul National University and MA from New York University. She received her M.F.A and B.F.A. from Seoul National University and M.A. from New York University. She has received a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, a Window of Opportunity grant from the Leeway Foundation, an acquisition award from the State Foundation of Culture and Arts in Hilo, Hawaii, an Honorary Mention in the Encyclopedia of Living Artists, and a Merit Award from the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts.She was an artist-in-residence at Santa Fe Art Institute, Yongeun Museum in South Korea, the Ascona Centro Incontri Umani in Switzerland, the Collaborative Press, Los Angeles, California, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in New Mexico, the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia, Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, California, Millay Colony in New York and a full fellowship in the Vermont Studio Center in Vermont. Her Solo Exhibitions include Artside Gallery, Yongeun Museum, and Dam Gallery in Seoul, Korea, Chi Gallery in New York, Art Museum in University of New Mexico, Constance Gallery, Helene Center for the Visual arts in IA, Mallin Gallery, Kansas City Artists Coalition in Kansas City, Artsforum Gallery in New York, and Dana Gallery, Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin and Marshall College. In Japan, her prints and paintings appeared at exhibitions at Osaka City Museum, the Fukuoka Prefectural Museum and the Doyusha Gallery. She has also exhibited at the Bronx Museum, the Drawing Center, Asian American Art Center, Bronx River Art Center, and the Queens Museum in New York, Lincoln Center in Colorado, and the Museum of Natural Sciences at North Carolina, Walter Wickirser Gallery in New York. Additionally, her work has been shown at the National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul Art Cosmos Center in Korea, the Taipei City Museum of Art in Taiwan, and Le Centre d’Estudis d’Art Centemporari in Barcelona, Spain, Galleria de Marchi in Bologna, Italy, and Ulft, Netherlands. Ms. Kim’s pieces are in many collections throughout the United States, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan and numerous reviews were published nationally and internationally including Philadelphia Inquirer.Hee Sook Kim is an Associate Professor at Haverford College in Pennsylvania and lives in Ardmore, PA.