Delicate work shone through
Husband and wife top in Portage Ceramic Awards
When Sang-Sool Shim first appeared in the New Zealand Herald nearly 30 years ago, the Korean martial arts instructor was pictured making a gravitydefying flying leap much to the amazement of a group of disbelieving Taekwon-do students.
Today, he’s more likely to keep his feet firmly on the ground especially at his Henderson Valley home which is a base for an altogether different kind of art. Along with artist and wife Keum Sun Lee, Shim is a well-known master ceramicist.
Their home and garden are filled with the products of two decades’ worth of work, including exhibitions and awards here, and in Korea, Croatia and Austria. Now they’re the Premier Award winners at New Zealand’s Portage Ceramic Awards — our most prestigious pottery prize.
The self-taught artists won the award for a large vessel called In the Beautiful Dream which Shim built on a potter’s wheel before Lee added freehand carvings on the surface and inlaid them with vibrant colours.
Los Angeles judge Bari Ziperstein saw the finalists’ work — around 60 pieces — after arriving in Auckland and says the flowers on In the Beautiful Dream haunted her at night in her jet-lagged haze.
While the couple have entered the Portage awards before, twice winning a people’s choice award, this is the first time they’ve taken home the premier award. “To be selected for the finalists’ exhibition is enough but of course we hoped, everybody hopes,” Lee says.
It’s far from the life the couple originally pursued. When they met nearly 20 years ago, she’d been working for the Korean government and he’d taught martial arts to members of Brunei’s royal family as well as NZ youth through the Arohanui Trust. Knowing he wanted to become a potter, Shim studied in Korea before the couple decided to return to New Zealand.
“We used to do a lot together,” recalls Shim, “but one day Keum Sun says, ‘you go fishing by yourself, I’ll stay home’ which was strange but I went. When I got home, someone has been drawing on the pot I was making!”
● Other Portage Ceramic award winners were Jim Cooper (Dunedin), Andrea du Chatenier (Whanganui) and Rick Rudd (Whanganui) who received merit awards. The 2018 Portage Ceramic Awards winners will be displayed at Te Uru — Waita¯ kere’s Contemporary Gallery — until February 10.