2026 Crafts Winner of Garden & Gun's Made in the South Awards

Though they come in standard serving sizes, Angela Chvarak Jung’s mugs and tumblers contain the stories of where she’s been. Painting and ceramics studies at Clemson University and in Seoul, South Korea, inform her technique. The Southern California sunsets that Jung watched during hikes in Los Angeles, where she lived and worked for seven years, manifest in soft shapes and soothing stripes. Recollections of her Korean family’s laughter filling her childhood home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, infuse her work with joy and drive vibrant color choices. “The strong friendships of my mom, grandmother, and aunts influenced me,” she says. “So did the rainbow colors of their traditional Korean hanbok dresses and gomusin shoes.” These days Jung throws her cups in her Baltimore home studio, taking care to create a thin wall for a lighter feel. “I don’t want them heavy, so I gradually pull the sides up; it takes steady hands,” she says. After an initial firing, she paints each piece with her hand-mixed hues, relying on underglazes to ensure accuracy, since “heat can alter glazes’ shades.” Color has always played a central role in her work, so when an art professor once suggested she use more-muted tones, she resisted. “My colors make people happy,” she says. And creating usable art makes Jung happy. “The cups are my total painting and ceramics philosophy in small, functional pieces people can enjoy daily; I love that.”