Inspired by… Bambola

Welcome to the beautiful and unsettling world of Jung-Hee Park, ball jointed doll designer and artist extraordinaire. Hee’s work is so engaging, combining an incredible level of artistry and skill with a highly developed and questioning sense of both popular culture and art history. In a similar fashion to my favourite plush makers, Hee blurs the boundary between doll making and sculpture, as you will see, these dolls and their created environments feel like installation pieces. I feel so out of my depth and completely unqualified to discuss Hee’s work in a meaningful way, I can only tell you that I am gripped by the worlds Hee creates and find something wonderfully subversive in her work’s ability to simultaneously unsettle and delight the viewer.

“I get inspiration from a John Everett Millais’s painting. My ‘Ophelia’ is mad no more and didn’t die in Hamlet. She is back with a cold, cold heart.”

Tell us a little about yourself, the media you work with and your creative process.

“Hello Lou Lou & Oscar Blog Interview readers!
My name is Hee. I’m a ball Jointed Doll artist in korea and I have just started again to learn stop motion animation in university. Recently I have been preparing to set up my own company for Bambola doll.”

“My favourite media to work in is clay. Sometimes I regret that I found out about this medium so late. When I was young I just wanted to be a painter and I studied painting for a long time but I realized that my talent is not as great as I would wish. This was very disappointing to me and I didn’t do anything for almost 1 year. Then I found my very first ball jointed doll in my mother’s house, that doll was made when I was 16. I wanted just to focus on something so I started to learn about how to make a ball jointed doll. I took to it like a fish to water. It’s so much fun! I was able to make what I wanted when I started to use clay.”

From where do you draw your inspiration: music, books, people, nature etc?

“I have a unique way for drawing my images (see below). I am also inspired in the usual way, by literature or a movie. I mostly like biographical books, books about a life that are well written, about people’s emotions. I am also inspired by writing about my work’s motivation and story. I always need music and walking for my work and I buy a fashion magazine every month.”

“The unusual way, I just keep looking at damaged things, where paint has stripped off or a pattern has formed accidentally. In a moment, I will be able to see some diffrent image. A pattern in stripped paint could change into a fat fox in the Cocktail glass. It’s a very funny way and helps to make an idea!”

If you could talk briefly about the background to one of your pieces which would you choose and why?

“It is hard to choose, because I have a lot of memories to all my pieces. So I will choose a piece that hasn’t been fully created yet.”

The red eyes girl. The girl does not laugh. She did not have lips and mouth when she was born but that is not reason for why she does not laugh. “Sometimes I want just to stop and I want killing or destroying to someone or something. Don’t ask me why, sometimes everyone wants that without reason” – the girl just growing to adult.

“You know, my work needs a long time until it is ready to view and I think my work is not able to arouse a person’s empathic understanding yet. I need more experience and to reflect about life. I am just starting to show to you about my work.”

Hee is such a delightful person and so incredibly modest about her work, it has been a joy to get to know her a little better through this interview. I am so grateful to Hee for the hard work she has put into this piece, ask me to write about myself in Korean and see how far I would get! If you would like to find out more about the world of Bambola you can visit Hee’s Flickr pages, blog and Herren Doll. A big hooray for Hee and her amazing dolls, I can’t wait to see what will emerge from those clay moulds next.