OPENING RECEPTION: March 22, 2013, 6-8:30pm
ABOUT THE ARTIST
For the past seven years, I have lived as an itinerant artist, traveling from fellowships to art residencies to homes of friends and family to teaching jobs from coast to coast. It was a life that I did not initially plan or could even predict, but one that unfolded gradually as I developed faith in my work.
This exhibit encompasses art that has emerged from my sustained relationship with handmade paper and its seemingly endless potential, rooted in Korean traditions that I have researched both in the field and the studio. I am interested in keeping alive ancient techniques and evolving them to reveal the fragile and strong nature of our precarious lives. By stretching the uses and ways of manipulating handmade paper, I reveal unknown stories of objects to encourage understanding and communication between people of different cultures. Through a paper wardrobe, I refer to disappeared paper cultures and possibilities for paper and materiality in our current culture of digital media. The landscape of this work stems from the mountains of Korea, gold artifacts from nomadic cultures of Kazakhstan, crowns that originated in Afghanistan, and the everyday human longing for home.
I prefer techniques that require hands-on, long-term, systematic practice. However, my love for improvisation balances the seemingly rigid nature of the tools that I use. Though I respect and admire the science behind natural dyes, I dye exuberantly without measuring utensils. While I love making paper, I spend as much energy on imperfections as I do trying to prevent them. Transforming scraps of paper and twists of bark gives me great pleasure but also provide my hands a life's work, without which my mind becomes dull and dark. The direct trace of the hand in artifacts, costumes, maps, and other objects reminds me of how much I still have to learn from the human hand, which is inextricably tied up with the human heart and mind.
In October, 2012 the Legacy Press released Aimee Lee's debut book about Korean papermaking called Hanji Unfurled: One Journey into Korean Papermaking. In the first English-language book about hanji, or Korean handmade paper, Lee recounts stories of meeting papermakers, scholars, and artists from Korean cities, villages, Buddhist temples, and island outposts. Interwoven with personal anecdotes from her yearlong Fulbright Fellowship, Lee describes the process of making and using hanji from harvesting trees to carefully weaving the finished paper into a sculptural vessel. The book will be available for purchase at c3:initiative throughout the duration of the exhibition.
Aimee Lee, a visual artist and papermaker, was born in New York City and researched Korean paper arts on a Fulbright Fellowship (2008-2009). She holds a BA from Oberlin College and MFA from Columbia College Chicago. Her artwork is exhibited internationally and resides in collections that include the Cleveland Institute of Art Gund Library, Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, Museum of Modern Art Library, and Yale University Library. She travels widely to teach and lecture at colleges, museums, and arts centers while writing about her research and providing hanji resources at aimeelee.net.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Paper Jewelry Workshop
Saturday, March 30, 10am - 4pm, Bring brown bag lunch
Registration Fee: $175 / Artist & Student Discount: $100
Supply Fee: $25 payable to instructor on day of workshop
Register at: info@c3initiative.org