Helen Kim

Helen Kim was born in Seoul, Korea, and moved to West Virginia with her family as a child. After high school, she attended Cornell University, where she received her Bachelor of Architecture degree. After graduation, Helen moved to Boston, where she lived for 2 years, and then to San Francisco, where she lived for almost 20 years. Helen now lives in San Mateo with her husband. 

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Helen grew up surrounded by strong, artistic women - her mother, grandmother and aunts, who all taught her to knit, sew and draw before she could write. Her artistic skills, combined with a love of puzzles, led to an interest in architecture, a field that combines problem-solving and critical thinking. After working at architecture firms in Boston and San Francisco, she accepted an executive management position at Accenture to create the firm’s Workplace Design Guidelines and travel to the company’s offices in Asia and the U.S. to implement them. She then opened Urban Knitting Studio in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley, a knitting retail and instruction business. Interesting fact - Kate Pierson from the rock group, The B-52’s, was one of Helen’s customers! 

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Helen began her full-time art practice in 2021. She creates abstract paintings, drawings and collages in her studio at Yosemite Place in San Francisco. Drawing is Helen's first love. When she started painting, her lyrical lines and marks naturally made their way onto the surface with oil and cold wax to visually narrate her life's story. Memories and emotions are expressed through colors, shapes and lines, all of which have been instrumental in developing her personal vocabulary. 

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Supporting women in the arts is important to Helen for many reasons. She studied architecture and worked in the field when few women served as role models in the profession. In addition, Helen experienced and witnessed female architects not being provided the same opportunities as their male counterparts. Today, women in architecture and art are receiving their well deserved recognition. Architects Julia Morgan, Zaha Hadid, Jeanne Gang and artists Ray Eames, Anni Albers, Louise Nevelson, Helen Frankenthaler, Etel Adnan, Squeak Carnwath and Julia Couzens inspire her. 

Shifting the Silence, a powerful exhibition that Helen saw in 2022 at SFMOMA made a significant impact on her. That show featured women artists who “use the radical language of abstraction to enhance the world we share.” Julia Couzens’ talk at Natsoulas Gallery in Davis in 2023 also had a profound impact on Helen. During her talk, Ms. Couzens spoke about the relatively small number of women artists who were represented in galleries and publications. Her work in that show addressed this imbalance.

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Profile written by Mary Mocas, SFA Member

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