Today, metalsmith Jinbi Park won the “Honoring the Future® Sustainability Award” at the prestigious 2023 Smithsonian Craft Show. The national award, which comes with a $1000 prize, recognizes an artist whose work educates the public about, or inspires or models, a sustainable response to climate change.
Jinbi Park, Coral-reef inspired jewelry. ©Jinbi Park 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
Wendy Maruyama, an internationally recognized artist, furniture maker and educator, judged the entries. She praised Park’s mastery of metalworking and eloquent visual response to the impacts of climate change on the world’s oceans.
Jinbi Park, Coral-reef inspired jewelry. ©Jinbi Park 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
Park draws on ancient Korean and Japanese techniques to craft contemporary jewelry inspired by nature’s organic structures – “especially those of the ocean, such as coral reefs.” Her current collection, Trace of Life – Have You Seen A Living Coral, reflects her scuba diving experiences:
Jinbi Park, Coral-reef inspired jewelry. ©Jinbi Park 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
“When I scuba dive, I draw inspiration from the ocean’s beauty. With global warming, pollution, and overfishing, reefs are dying all over the world. So it is my passion to create art with reef-like motifs to share that beauty with others, some of whom will never see a living reef.”
Park also demonstrates her environmental commitment in the composition of her jewelry: she uses only recycled metals and ethically, sustainably-mined gemstones.
Jinbi Park holding metal destined for recycling. ©Jinbi Park 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
“The Sustainability Award celebrates artists who use their powerful visual voices to guide us toward saving a planet in peril,” observes Honoring the Future’s Director, Fran Dubrowski. “Jinbi Park’s stunning jewelry invites wearers and viewers to appreciate our remaining reefs – and to join the effort to protect them.”
The Sustainability Award continues a tradition begun in 2015 to honor Smithsonian Craft Show exhibitors who point the way to a more sustainable future.
Honoring the Future offers the award in partnership with the Smithsonian Women’s Committee, a volunteer grant-making organization dedicated to advancing the Smithsonian’s mission to increase and diffuse knowledge. The Smithsonian Women’s Committee produces the Smithsonian Craft Show to generate funds for grants to support education, outreach and research at the Smithsonian’s 19 museums and libraries, 9 research facilities and the National Zoo.
