Excerpt from Artist Statement for ICFF: Soo Joo is a Korean-American designer from the East Coast (Delaware, New Jersey, and Rhode Island). Her woodshop and studio is currently based in Seoul, Korea. She has a background in painting, classically trained in fine art at Sunhwa Arts School. Drawn to sculpture and 3D making, Soo majored in Furniture Design at RISD. She combines her education in traditional woodworking with her foundation in fine art, to create sculptural furniture. Her work is at the same time novel and timeless. She sees her work foremost as sculpture, and she adds function to her work so that viewers can engage with it tactically in their daily lives. Soo Joo’s aesthetic is influenced by traditional Korean art and design, which values forms that harmoniously coexist with nature. Having grown up connected with nature in suburban New England, she also values biophilia - our innate human need to feel connected to nature from our evolutionary history. Soo Joo develops ‘natural analogs,’ one of the three types of biophilic design that use form and material to remind viewers of nature. Her work aims to bring the physical and physiological benefits of biophilia into our built environment. “At the basic core of my work is an investigation into how non-living, abstract forms can still carry the essence of nature. Through my work, I develop a new visual language, from an East-Asian perspective, that serves as an alternative to geometry.”