I keep up with my former colleagues and teachers from time to time. Some, though are producing such predictably substandard (or off-the-wall) work, that I will be spending less time doing so. I don't want to be a perpetually angry (or disappointed) critic; I have too many things to do. And there are others worth my time.
One such that I will leave out of the loop for now is an "associate professor" at the Ontario College of Art and Design - Chung Im Kim, about whom I have written here. She is the head instructor for fabric design and print. But, since textile design is an inferior ambition in her eyes, and since she is an "artist" first and foremost, her teaching and design legacy is abysmal.
She periodically produces "textile art" to be displayed in the various galleries around the city, and here is her latest atrocity, which she calls "Small Wave."
I wrote that she is unable (unwilling) to represent nature, and instead distorts the images she culls from the environment. This piece is no exception. I can see she's trying various textile techniques, including quilting and embroidery (the quilting is what drives her to cut up this "small wave" into segments). Her end result is an incoherent, vaguely recognizable, amalgam of circular shapes. I doubt without the title I would even recognize what they're supposed to be.
I believe it is her inability to recognize and accept the world around her that compels her to make "art" such as this. A type of alienation from this country she has traveled several oceans to inhabit. I always wonder why immigrants make this trek of thousands of miles only to hate where they are? If she cannot do waves in Canada, can she do them in Korea? I suspect she could.
All we get from her is bad teaching (again see the link about her, where I write about the textile works of students she monitors) and incomprehensible landscapes. And an arrogance that she belongs here on her own terms, which simply means a nice life receiving a great salary from one of the prestigious design schools in Canada. She herself has nothing to contribute. Such is the legacy of current immigrants.
