04 Oct 2024
Sam (Woo Lam) Choi is one of the first recipients of Creative New Zealand’s Creative Fellowship Fund. The grant gave Sam the time he needed to produce works for Walk in the Park, his solo exhibition at the Public Space Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau.
Sam first trained in woodworking and furniture design in Korea. That training informs the artworks he creates using woodturning techniques.
“I often imagine my work as architecture, interesting and unique architecture. I think about structure and how to balance contrasting elements. I’m always trying to create an object that has a tension between the elements and to make something interesting looking rather than just developing the skill,” Sam says.
Sam looks everywhere for inspiration, seeing potential forms and surfaces in shells, stones, and water. He’s also inspired by other craft materials, including ceramics and textiles.
“They give me a totally different view of the material I use and help me push the boundaries for what I can do and develop new ideas.”
Sam’s skill with woodturning began to develop in 2016, when he found a local woodturning community in west Auckland. He’d been in Aotearoa for about five years, working as a chef, and was looking for something new, complicated, and creative.
Woodturning filled that space. He found he really enjoyed the practice, even as he noticed how different it was from other making he had done with wood.
“The texture and smell of the wood and using hand tools is really different to furniture design. You can see the results quickly, within an hour you can have a bowl in your hand. You can make small changes as you go, which is something you can’t do with furniture.”
Sam’s first creations were functional objects for retail sale. And they did! His wife Jiho is a trained photographer and used her skills to promote his work on social media.
The positive public response meant demand outstripped Sam’s ability to supply. He said goodbye to being a chef, got a workshop in Titirangi and became a full time woodturner.
Then a gallery offered him a solo show. Further gallery opportunities helped him towards his goal of being recognised as an artist or master maker. Same says the starting point for the Walk in the Park exhibition came from a commission for an urn for a loved one’s remains.
“At the beginning making the urns was overwhelming. I had to hear the story and make something special enough for that. During the process, I had to find the element that suited the story of the person. The urn became a meaningful object. That’s where the main idea of the show comes from, the idea of a container or box holding something special inside it.”
Sam wants to challenge perceptions of woodturning as a craft and push the boundaries of what is possible.
“The raw material I can find in New Zealand is precious – I don’t want to lose much. I do lots of drawing and plan for the result. I have a precise lens. I cut bit by bit and am sometime surprised by the result.”
Walk in the Park is at Public Record Gallery in Auckland until 13 October.
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