New shoots,
shaped in clay
The life force of nature, carried into the materiality of ceramic.A simple, naturalistic world of trees and sprouting shoots.
Clay and growth —
nature given form by hand
Kim Jiyeong is a ceramicist whose work begins, again and again, from a single source: nature. Rather than reaching for ornament, she draws her forms from what grows — and the task she sets herself is to carry the life force of a living thing into the slow, fixed materiality of clay.
Her practice gathers around the image of the tree. In the 〈Sprouting Tree〉 series, the subject is not a tree in full leaf but the moment just before — the new shoot pressing up out of the branch, growth caught at the instant it becomes visible. To shape a sprouting shoot in clay is to hold a moving thing still without killing the movement, and that paradox is the quiet centre of her work.
The companion 〈A Single Tree〉 series narrows the gaze further. One tree, standing alone, becomes enough — a whole world held in a single form. Here the naturalism is not a matter of faithful copying but of attention: the tree is simplified until only what matters remains, and what remains is its life.
Her language is deliberately spare. She withholds excess, paring each piece down to a clean, simple silhouette so that the material itself — the weight of the fired clay, the quiet of its surface — can do the speaking. In that restraint a naturalistic world opens: not nature reproduced, but nature distilled, slowed, and made to last.
What ties the two series together is a single conviction — that growth is worth shaping, that the smallest beginning of a living thing deserves the permanence of fired earth. Kim Jiyeong's ceramics are, in this sense, a patient act of keeping: the new shoot remembered in clay, the single tree held so it can be looked at long enough to be seen.
Major themes
- 1
Inspired by nature
Forms drawn from what grows — the life force of a living thing carried into the fixed materiality of clay.
- 2
The tree and the new shoot
In 〈Sprouting Tree〉 and 〈A Single Tree〉, growth is caught at the instant it becomes visible — a moving thing held still without killing its movement.
- 3
Simple, naturalistic form
Excess withheld, each piece pared to a clean silhouette — naturalism as attention rather than faithful copying.
At a glance
- Medium: ceramics — works inspired by nature
- Series: 〈Sprouting Tree〉 — growth caught at the moment a new shoot rises
- Series: 〈A Single Tree〉 — a whole world held in one standing tree
- Sensibility: simple, naturalistic — restraint that lets the material speak
Three essays —
on clay, growth, and what remains
1Clay as material — fixing the life of a living thing
Clay is a paradoxical material for a naturalist. It begins soft, responsive, almost alive under the hand — and then, in the kiln, it is made permanent, fixed beyond any further change. To work in ceramic is to convert movement into stillness, the living into the lasting. For an artist whose subject is the life force of nature, that conversion is not a limitation but the whole point.
Kim Jiyeong takes a thing that grows — a tree, a shoot — and gives it the density of fired earth. The result is not a model of nature but a holding of it: the moment of growth is no longer fleeting; it can be returned to, weighed in the hand, looked at again tomorrow. The material does what memory wishes it could do — it keeps.
This is why the surface matters as much as the shape. A quiet, simple surface lets the clay register as clay, the weight register as weight; nothing distracts from the fact that something alive has been carried over into something that will remain. The naturalism lives in that act of carrying, not in mere resemblance.
2〈Sprouting Tree〉 — growth at the instant it shows
A sprouting shoot is one of nature's quietest events and one of its most complete. Nothing has happened yet, and everything is about to. The 〈Sprouting Tree〉 series takes precisely this threshold as its subject — not the tree arrived at its full size, but the tree in the act of beginning.
To choose the new shoot is a statement about value. It says that the smallest beginning is already worth shaping; that potential, before it has proven anything, deserves attention and form. In clay, a shoot is rendered with care rather than grandeur — a small upward motion given the dignity of being made to last.
There is tenderness in this, but no sentimentality. The forms stay simple, the gesture restrained. The work trusts the shoot to mean what it means without being explained: that life insists on continuing, and that the moment it shows itself is worth keeping.
3〈A Single Tree〉 — a whole world in one form
Where 〈Sprouting Tree〉 watches a beginning, 〈A Single Tree〉 watches a whole. One tree, standing on its own, is offered as sufficient — not a forest, not a scene, but a single living form held up to be considered in full.
The simplicity here is hard-won. To reduce a tree to one clean form is to decide what a tree essentially is, and to let go of everything else. What survives the reduction is not a generic shape but a particular presence: this tree, standing, alive. The naturalism is a matter of keeping the essential and trusting it to carry the rest.
Set beside the sprouting series, the single tree completes a small arc — from the shoot that has just begun to the tree that simply, fully is. Together they describe one continuous attention to growth: a ceramicist quietly insisting that a single living thing, shaped with care, is world enough.
From the rising shoot to the single standing tree, Kim Jiyeong's ceramics pursue one patient question: how does one carry the life force of a living thing into the lasting materiality of clay? Her answer is shaped by hand, in simple and naturalistic forms attentive to growth. She joins this campaign not as a subject of its cause but as a fellow artist in solidarity — so that the proceeds of her work might become a low-interest lifeline for artists facing financial exclusion today.
Selected Works
2 works are featured here.
Kim Jiyeong joined this campaign in solidarity with fellow artists. Every work sold flows directly into the artists' mutual-aid loan fund— a purchase becomes the next month's lifeline for an artist navigating financial exclusion today.
