Pat Kim: Material-Led Making Across Sculpture, Furniture, and Printmaking
Pat Kim, an artist from Brooklyn, investigates the influence of materials on objects through his work in sculpture, furniture, and printmaking. His upbringing in Arlington, Virginia, along with an inventive uncle, has significantly shaped his artistic vision. After earning a degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute in 2009, Kim honed his woodworking skills during the financial crisis and helped establish a cooperative woodshop in Red Hook, Brooklyn. His interest in wood turning fosters creative exploration. The Formations vase series features untreated southern yellow pine, achieving marble-like textures. Additionally, he creates moiré prints from wood scraps using textured rollers and has constructed a vacuum table for working with the delicate hanji paper. Kim's approach highlights tool-making, the uniqueness of materials, and hands-on experimentation.
Key facts
- Pat Kim is a Brooklyn-based artist and designer working across sculpture, furniture, objects, and printmaking.
- Kim grew up in Arlington, Virginia, and studied industrial design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, graduating in 2009.
- He also studied for a short period at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
- Kim co-founded a cooperative woodshop in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where he continues to live and work.
- His Formations vase series uses untreated southern yellow pine, with bleaching and staining to create marble-like surfaces while preserving cracks and splits.
- Kim's moiré prints developed from an abandoned turning experiment with a textured surface that was inked and rolled across paper.
- He carves textures into turned wood or resin with a specialized tool to make cylindrical rollers for printing.
- Working with hanji, traditional Korean paper, led Kim to build a vacuum table to manage the paper beneath moving rollers.
Entities
Artists
- Pat Kim
Institutions
- Pratt Institute
- Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
- AATONAU
Locations
- Brooklyn
- United States
- Arlington
- Virginia
- Red Hook
- Adirondacks
- Weimar
- Germany
Sources
- AATONAU —