Member Spotlight: Jon Sung
What do you do when a once bountiful fruit basket has only one lonely lemon left? In his home, this visual struck Jon as an opportunity. And then the thought just would not leave his head until he brought it to life. Read our interview with sculptor Jon Sung to get an insight into his imaginative creative process.
MudWorks: What inspired your fruit holder sculptures?
Jon Sung: I was thinking about our fruit bowl — just about every house has a big bowl somewhere in their kitchen or dining space with a bunch of fruit in it, right? Which works great as long as there's plenty of fruit, but as it gets less and less crowded, the size of the bowl starts to sort of work against the remaining pieces of fruit until the last one just looks faintly ridiculous sitting there all on its own. What do you do when you're down to your last piece of fruit? Obviously you put a little guy on your counter and make the fruit become his head. I showed the prototype to my wife's best friend and she laughed so hard she almost drooled; I think I've been chasing the magic of that first reaction ever since.
MW: You create a lot of Star Trek imagery in your sculptures, what is it about that show and the lore that appeals to you? Are there any other shows or movies that affect you in the same way, and will we see sculptures alluding to those?
JS: Star Trek: The Next Generation has been brain tape since childhood. I think it's meant different things to me at different times: action, adventure, and the human drive for exploration, but also friendship, connection, and unity. The Star Trek universe contains an infinity of possibilities, not just because it has the entire galaxy to play with, but also time: there are worlds' worth of stories in at least three different timeframes with what seems like an ever-expanding set of characters. So naturally, of course, that means I make goofy sculptures for Star Trek nerds like me. Right now they seem to come in two different flavors:
1. Little statues of beloved characters holding a big knife. They're meant to stand in your garden or pot and guard your plants. I think of them as garden totems — aesthetically distinct from, say, a garden gnome, but with the same ultimate whimsical purpose. I like the idea of Captain Jean-Luc Picard standing guard over someone's carrots ready to shank an intruder.
And 2. Highly specific but recognizable villains from the Star Trek universe wearing brightly colored party hats. They're also supposed to go in gardens and pots, but I suspect they'd make a good desk decoration, too. At the risk of self-aggrandizing, I'm really happy with the way the hats look, the way they offset the wickedness baked into the design of these creatures; these villains are trying to sneak into your house or garden under some pretext of jollity, but at the same time they can't help being what they are. They make me laugh a lot and I need to make more soon.
I'm a fan of a great many other fictional universes from movies, books, videogames, etc, but I think I'm vaguely intimidated by the prospect of drawing from any of them, because where would I stop? Then again, seeing as how this is a hobby I intend to keep for a good long while, maybe having a near-infinite well of characters to make into garden totems is a real asset.
MW: You also create Tardigrade sculptures. First, what are tardigrades, and what inspired you to sculpt them?
JS: Tardigrades are nature's perfect unkillable little weirdos. They have the ability to enter a kind of self-dessicated suspended animation, and in their dried-up, almost sporelike state, they can't be harmed by freezing, boiling, irradiation, or even exposure to the vacuum of space. What an incredible superpower to have! But also they're like a millimeter long. They're tiny. I think that's hilarious. My tardigrade sculptures are a celebration of these incredible guys, which is why I deck them out in crazy colors, or a metallic glaze I bought on a whim that turned out to be fantastic. There are other patterns and ideas I'm working on, too.
A tardigrade sculpture finished with a shiny metallic glaze. Now on display at MudWorks!
MW: What projects are you working on right now in the studio?
JS: I have two little kids, and sometime in the next year or so, my oldest is going to start losing his baby teeth. I don't have the agility or stealth to successfully pull off that under-the-pillow tooth fairy switcheroo while he sleeps, so I've hit upon an alternative I'm calling the Tooth Fairy's Liaison: a little guy with a tooth-shaped crown who holds a dish in his hands. Whenever one of the kids loses a tooth, the Tooth Fairy's Liaison will appear in our kitchen and we'll put the tooth in his dish with some quickly improvised ceremony, and when they come down the next morning, the tooth will be gone, transformed into coins or a little toy or something. Version 1 of the Tooth Fairy's Liaison turned out pretty nicely, but there was a mishap during his glaze firing, which means I need to make V1.1 sometime soon.
I also have an idea for a silly, wildly specific fruit holding sculpture that I need to plan out; it's another one of those ideas that keeps bubbling up!
MW: What excites you as an artist?
JS: I don't think I'm ever going to get tired of seeing something that formerly existed as a thought in my head translated into a physical object that I can hold in my hands, with real weight and texture and delightful little details that I never initially imagined. My littler son, who's not quite 2, frequently requests string cheese as part of his meals, and whenever we take a string cheese out of the fridge, he lets out what I can only describe as a gleefully supervillainous cackle that cracks us up every time; I think I make a similar sound when I see the results of the latest glaze firing.
Jon’s whimsical sculptures are currently on display at MudWorks Pottery Studio, or available for purchase on his Etsy store.
Thank you so much, Jon, for sharing with us!