Teacher and artist John Park has entered the contemporary art scene, and it’s no double life at all
By Fabiana Yu
Photographs by Eric Sueyoshi
On the eve of his art show opening in downtown Los Angeles, artist John Park enjoys a life that would have been much different had it not been for a friend’s suggestion to enroll in art school more than 10 years prior. As a senior in high school, Park was headed for the Marine Corps. Growing up, he wasn’t particularly fond of school. Although the teen had spent endless hours drawing and painting since early youth, he didn’t know that going to college for art was even an option. But a family friend saw one of his paintings and recommended the Rhode Island School of Design instead of the military, and Park welcomed the new possibility.
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Considering the crowd of art students and aficionados admiring his work on a recent Saturday night in December, it was advice well taken.
Sharing gallery space with Hans Haveron, a fellow artist he met three years ago at Burning Man (a weeklong festival held in Nevada’s deserts known for art installations and the torching of a 40-foot wooden icon), 34-year-old art teacher John Park is debuting 12 of his own paintings and two collaborative pieces. His work is displayed in downtown L.A.’s 01 Gallery, a post-contemporary gallery founded by renowned curator John Pochna who has exhibited works by respected artists like Anthony Ausgang and Robert Williams.
Park’s abstract paintings, priced anywhere from $1,500 to $5,000, are pleasantly complex, full of intricate details and captivating colors. Everything drawn and painted is purely taken from memory. Featuring fairylike women (“Water Fairie,” “Japanese Demon”) or imagined creatures in the background (“Harlequin Ape,” “Tree Thoughts”), his paintings are a long way from the straightforward, realistic portraits he did earlier in his life. His past drawings and paintings were predominantly figurative, with classical and neoclassical influences and Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” among the most significant.
The art school graduate’s move to new surroundings in Los Angeles from the East Coast 11 years ago inspired something new. “I started to get influenced by what was going on in Los Angeles, which is this pop surrealism movement that combines aspects of graffiti art, tattoo art, animé, comic strips, all kinds of current influences,” Park explains.
His paintings are filled with different layers, presenting cryptic images and depictions of animals, sea creatures, flowers or vines to the careful eye. “When it comes to one of John’s pieces, no matter the scale, one can either become immersed in its complexity or content in the aesthetic of the whole,” says 01 Gallery curator Karim Sobati. Looking at Park’s artwork is an active exercise, especially from up close. He admits that his effort to create pieces that can be enjoyed from any distance — from across the room to six inches away — is indeed deliberate.
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But his artwork is far from following a conventional course from start to finish. “None of the pieces that are up on the show had an original path,” Park says. He compares the process to chaos theory: putting randomness on a canvas for a couple of days, turning it sideways and upside down, until the seemingly haphazard parts coalesce into a balanced whole.
In a way, much of the same can be said about his career as a contemporary artist, which wasn’t particularly planned out from the get-go. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Park moved to Ohio at age 3. Once he received his BFA in Illustration, he found himself listless as a graduate, taking odd jobs in a skate shop, a movie theater and an art store — a period he unabashedly dubs “that kind of time of largesse and doing nothing.” Staying connected to art through freelance and pro-bono jobs as a medical illustrator, a mural artist (one of his murals is featured in the outdoor patio area of L.A.’s historic Formosa Café) and a teacher’s assistant, Park finally landed a job as an art teacher in Santa Monica’s Concord High School, where he’s been for 11 years.
“It’s a subject I can talk about forever, it’s infinitely interesting to me, all aspects of it,” says Park of his job. He goes on to express his love for the great energy that lives in a classroom.
At first, Park was content and satisfied with just teaching art (he still is). But about seven years ago, noting the amount of downtime during his classes when students worked on their projects, Park decided to adopt a new technique: teach students with personal artwork, while producing pieces. He remembers learning the most from college professors who would allow students to take a break from their work to look over professors’ shoulders — to see how they held their brush or mixed their colors and to ask questions in between.
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To date, almost all of his paintings have been seen by his students from beginning to end. In fact, he counts many as his fans, and several of them showed up at his recent art show with their parents to support the well-liked teacher.
Now his career as a contemporary artist has taken off and despite recent well-received shows — including one last September at Venice’s Brick House Café known for showcasing up-and-coming artists — Park says he won’t be leaving his day job anytime soon. “I want to be teaching for the rest of my life,” he says.
He also treasures the special relationship that he has with his artwork, made possible by his teaching job, because there is no pressure to sell his pieces for food or rent. It affords him the best of both worlds — engaging in a personal passion and sharing it with others.
