Additional Information
Teaching Areas: Costume Design, Costume Rendering, Make-up, etc.
Tenured faculty
Date of Hire: August 2005
Biography
Hyun Sook Kim is a tenured Associate Professor of Costume Design at the Department of Theatre and Dance in Ball State University where she works as costume designer, teacher, and mentor of costume and makeup design. She holds a MFA degree in Costume Design from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, MA degree with a thesis in Costume Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a BA from Korea University in communications. At Ball State University, she teaches theatrical costuming, stage make-up, costume design, costume rendering, color studies, costume form & materials, costume history, and she has successfully designed many productions such as The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Antigone, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, Rhythm and Soul: A Passion for Latin, Urinetown, The Wild Party, Indiana Choreographer's Dance Concert, Love's Labour's Lost, Nunsense, Camino Real, Noises Off, The Fantasticks, Angels in America-Millennium Approaches, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, etc.
In 2012, Professor Kim has been a 25 year experienced costume designer and teacher including her professional career for National Theatre Company, National Dance Company, National Ballet Company, and the prestigious LG Arts Center in Seoul, Korea and her long-time teaching experiences in many universities such as the Korea National University of Arts and others. Since 1987, she has taught various costume design and technology classes—design, rendering, history, flat patterning, draping, world culture, life drawing, creative art form construction, etc. Professionally, she has designed costumes for various large-scale productions of drama, musical, dance, opera, concert such as 1988 Seoul Olympics International Contemporary Dance Festival, Oedipus the King, Othello, Carmen, Richard III, A Mid Summer Night’s Dream, Good Woman of Setzuan, The World of Minimalist Music, West Side Story, etc. She won prestigious awards in Korea, including the Dong-A Theatre Award and the Baek-Sang Arts Award, also won both the Korean Musical Award and the 1997 This Year's Design Award for the outstanding costume designs of the musical The Last Empress.
As an artist and educator of immense skills, Professor Kim is internationally recognized costume designer who holds a wealth of international design experiences including professional work on stages in New York, Toronto, London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Osaka and Beijing. Her design of the musical production The Last Empress enjoyed a lengthy North American run including two stops at the Lincoln Center in New York City, at the Kodak Theatre and the Schubert Theatre in Los Angeles, and at the Hummingbird Center in Toronto, also in London's West End. The design work is the great achievement still continuing on running in the world. During the fall of 2011, the musical production has been performing 16 years of staging. Also, Professor Kim's costume designs have been selected and displayed in world-wide exhibitions at Anthem Gallery in Soho, New York City, at Fashion Institute of Vienna, at Hotel Concorde La Fayette in Paris, at Prague Industrial Palace in 1999 and 2007 Prague Quadrennial, in 2008 Fashion Art International Exhibit at Beijing, and in many National USITT Design Exhibits. Her design work has been also exhibited in the 2009 World Stage Design at Seoul, 2010 International Creative Costume Exhibition, 2011 Russia International Exhibit at Moscow, 2012 International Invited Fashion Exhibition at Hangzhou, China, one of which is currently displayed in the Lucina Hall Welcome Center at Ball State University. Also, she was chosen as an artist featured in the 2010 Virginia Ball Center Project "Hidden Treasures" at Ball State University.
She is a professional member of USITT, OISTAT (International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians), International Costume Association, Korean Society of Costume, etc.
Her great hope is to dedicate to training of young theatre artists to make them grow to be soulful professionals, who are eventually able to contribute to making new creative trends and mode in the contemporary theatre world.