Portal 2, Hawaii Island Juried Art Competition

BIO_10-2023
Valerie Yong Ock Kim grew up on the Hawaiian island of O`ahu. She is the granddaughter of Okinawan and Korean immigrants. She now lives on the Hamakua Coast of Hawaii Island.

Pursuing work with a wide spectrum of the arts over the years, she produced slide shows and small films, always coming back to the still image.

She has been included in juried and solo exhibits, across the US and Paris, with work in private collections in Japan and Sweden. Her solo exhibition, “Light Speed Matter, A Still Place Waiting;” at the Hui No`eau Visual Arts Center on Maui, included photographic cast glass pieces, and a video. Most recently, “Passing Notes, Conversations,” was a solo exhibition at Crafton Hills College in California.

Valerie worked as a Local 399 Location Manager on feature films out of Los Angeles and across the United States for twenty years. She worked with Oscar-winning Directors Ang Lee, Julie Taymor, and on Gore Verbinski’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” series. Her filmography is listed on IMDB.com.
Kim was writer-director on “Waging Peace,” a short live-action film about Soviet and American children struggling against situation and prejudice, to become staunch friends at the end of the Cold War in the 1980’s. It can be streamed on her website. She holds a master’s in public health degree from the University of Hawaii.

Kim is a member of ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers). She is represented by The Fine Art Associates, Inc. in Honolulu, Photo Resource Hawai'i, and by Appleton Art Design in Connecticut. In New York City, she is with Art For Film. Online, her work is at www.valyokim.com. And on Torus Gallery (http://torusgallery.com/kim/kim.html).

Interviews can be found on VoyageLA, at https://voyagela.com/interview/rising-stars-meet-valerie-y-o-kim-of-used-to-be-in-hollywood-now-hawaii/ and on Canvas Rebel at https://canvasrebel.com/meet-valerie-y-o-kim/

Valerie spent the last decade caring for her film editor husband who contracted Alzheimer’s Disease and passed away in 2016. She now lives and continues her work in Pa'auilo, on Hawai'i Island with her alpha female dog, Makana Malie.