Who is Yon Sim Park?

Yon Sim Park is the sculptor who created the statues of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln on the RSU campus in Claremore.

Park (sometimes spelled Pak) was born in Korea, where he developed a reputation as a portrait painter.

RSC President Dr. Richard Mosier became aware of Park’s work at the Pepe Mendez Studios in Tulsa, where he created a statue representing Michelangelo’s Pieta for the grounds of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother convent in Broken Arrow, Okla.

Park was commissioned by RSC to develop the Thomas Jefferson statue to commemorate the U.S. Bicentennial.

Mosier later invited Park to serve as an Artist-in-Residence at Rogers State College. He taught at RSC in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and lived in one of the campus residences (recently demolished.)

While at RSC, Park also sculpted statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln for the Rogers campus in Claremore.