Hyun Sook Kim

Associate Professor Hyun Sook Kim holds MFA terminal degree in Costume Design from U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, MA at U of Illinois at Chicago, and BA from Korea University in Seoul. As a long-experienced educator and designer, Kim has taught at Ball State U, Korea National U of Arts, Chung-Ang U, among others. She is internationally recognized for her outstanding costume designs in NYC, London, Toronto, LA, Tokyo, Osaka, Beijing and Seoul. Many of her designs have been seen in large-scale productions at prestigious international and national venues. Particularly, her design for the mega-scale musical, The Last Empress (Empress Myeongseong), has been presented at NY Lincoln Center, LA Kodak Theatre and Schubert Theatre, and Toronto Hummingbird Center, as well as in London’s West End. The musical celebrates now its 24th year’s anniversary of long-run success. Across the nation, Kim has designed for the New York State LORT Capital Repertory Theatre, The Human Race Theatre, Pan Asian Repertory Theatre at New York City, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, among others. Her designs have received laudatory reviews including from The New York Times and many theatre critics. Internationally, Kim has presented her works in the prominent exhibitions such as PQ (Prague Quadrennial), WSD (World Stage Design), International Costume Association Exhibit, etc. Her costume designs have been selected in 2015 Costume At The Turn of The Century 1990-2015 at The A. A. Bakhrushin Theatre Museum in Moscow, 2017 World Stage Design at Taipei, Taiwan, 2018 USA National USITT Design Expo, and 2019 USA Prague Quadrennial Exhibit. In Fall 2018, Kim has been awarded 2018 Faculty Recognition for Scholarly and Creative Activity at CSUF. Kim has travelled to Prague Quadrennial in Summer 2019 as a part of USA national design team, with being awarded USITT International Committee Travel Grants. Also, Kim has been presenting her creative Art-To-Wear works in various International Fashion-Art Exhibitions in the annual base for a long time. Most recently, Kim has won ‘Good Design Award’ for her Art-To-Wear work “Flying” at the 2019 Annual International Fashion Exhibition, by utilizing the currency costume materials Thermoplastic fabric and LED lights. She has worked on translation and recently published a book, Costume Design, with her Korean colleagues in Seoul. Kim is expected to design costumes for SF Shakespeare Festival 2020’s King Lear and NYC Pan Asian Rep’s Cambodia Agonistes 2020, which of some productions will go to On-line presentations under the COVID-19 situation. Kim is an active member of national USITT, international OISTAT, Performance Design Costume Commission, Costume Society of America, and The Korean Society of Costume.

As an art educator, Kim is always excited to see her students growing to think out-of-the-box and reaching out of their scope. Her ultimate goal is to dedicate to training of young theatre artists to make them become soulful professionals, who can eventually contribute to the contemporary theatre world with new creative ideas.

Articles:

USA Prague Quadrennial 2019
The LA Korean Daily
The SFGate
Daily Titan