Meet Artist Ala Park

Ala Park creates art with mediums that are technically challenging and artistically exhilarating

Designer and artist Ala Park was born and raised in the Republic of Moldova, an Eastern European country sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine. She now resides in the mountains of Boulder, where she creates fish bone art—“a new art form I developed on my own in 1994 while living in my native country,” she says. Her fish bone art shows in galleries across the country and in juried exhibits. She also creates encaustic (hot wax) paintings. Park was a medical doctor in her homeland, and later practiced interior and fashion design for years. She excels in fiber arts—sewing, crocheting and knitting—and says her artistic endeavors are inspired by “challenges and interest in all things new.”

Park: I practice both fish bone art and encaustic painting. My fish bone works are made with different types of fish bones in natural colors that I glue to a black velvet background to provide contrast. Each work offers the fish a new life in unexpected ways, and symbolizes a type of rebirth through metamorphosis. My encaustic paintings are an Impressionism style that uses heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added. An iron and heating table are my main tools for encaustic painting, but I also use metal tools and special brushes to shape the wax or manipulate it once it has cooled onto the surface.

H+G: What is your favorite thing about creating art?

Park: Art for me is the vibration that creates the connection and balance between my inner world and the surrounding one. It is a way to express my dreams and inspirations—to capture elusive visions that so easily vanish—and to immortalize them.

H+G: What is your greatest challenge about creating art?

Park: The creation of art is like a free flight—only a broken flight could be scary.

H+G: What terrifies you?

Park: That would be the future of millennials.

H+G: Why are you drawn to encaustic painting and fish bone art?

Park: Encaustic painting is an uncommon medium and technique. It’s lesser known by art admirers and lesser used by artists. It’s continuous improvisation, because an encaustic painting’s beginning is known, but its end is not. The unrepeatable way of painting wax makes each work unique. Fish bone art is a completely original 3D art form I developed on my own. I’m drawn to it because it is an absolutely new form of mixed media. 

H+G: What artists do you admire?

Park: I admire artists who have an individual way of expressing themselves through their style or medium, their technique, or the message they’re trying to send to art admirers. Every artist has at least one piece of work that leaves you mesmerized, makes you thoughtful or gives you an answer.

H+G: What is your favorite pastime?

Park: Creating. That could be in fashion design—drawing, sewing, crocheting or knitting—or in interior design, or even in the kitchen through creating new recipes. I also enjoy interacting with nature, animals and people, and exploring undiscovered places and unusual things, and meeting people who are special through their way of being and living their lives.

H+G: What do you want your art to say?