Trained as a metalsmith, Kim creates works that utilize the history, making, and meaning of craft and domestic ornamentation. She most recently taught as Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. An undergraduate at the University of Michigan, Kim earned an MFA in Metals from the State University of New York at New Paltz, and studied at Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting. Kim has taught in art programs across the country including University of Michigan, San Diego State University, Arizona State University, and Penland School of Crafts.

Of her work she writes: I am on object maker. I believe in their power to enrich, record, and extend our lives. As a child growing up in rural Michigan, I learned my family history through utilitarian and decorative objects rather than photographs. It is no coincidence that I chose to study craft, an area whose ties to function, labor, the sensual, and the real and everyday actions of life have not been entirely severed. I believe that the forms, processes, and materials that give flesh to objects of utility and ornament are rich with content, and consider this to be the subject of my work.