Of stitching and stories
Themes of identity, personal growth sewn into fabric of exhibit
Kansas City Star, May 14, 2004
By Robin Trafton

The petite stitched works and short poetic texts of Ke-Sook Lee's solo show, “Notes From the Garden," speak volumes.

The Writers Place, a literary community center and library, proves an appropriate venue for this small and intimate exhibition that highlights the artist's use of text in her ongoing exploration of identity and the feminine aesthetic. The show gives new insight into the process side of Lee's work and, more important, how she constructs meaning.

On the main wall of the Writers Place, Lee installed four long, horizontal plexiglass boxes, lined up like a stopped freight train. In each box, six pages of white paper are stitched simply to a soft linen background, encouraging consecutive viewing. Each page, created between 2000 and 2004, contains a sketch or line drawing accompanied by the artist's notes.

In a recent interview, Lee explained that these were more than just preliminary drawings en route to more elaborate future works. "I consider (them) as a complete... work in themselves. It is a form that offers me extra freedom to take out my urgent need and force from inside with such direct speed. I wanted to capture those precious moments in my studio."

English is Lee's second language, and it is the idiosyncratic English in her written notes that encourages a fresh way of seeing. The simplicity of Lee's writing is never simplistic. Her notes come across as honest and inquisitive and filled with unassuming wisdom.

Her most powerful works are those that act as visual metaphors for issues of personal growth and struggles for identity. For example, on one page, an abstracted symbol that looks like a towering stack of dishes and bowls evolves into something much more when she writes, "to live; to do the right thing; all my bone; all my muscle; aches and cries; to the right thing. Impeccable my being." Lee's private psychological struggle to find balance within herself is one many will identify with.

One of Lee's trademarks is to construct with things found in a garden multifaceted analogies of her experiences as a mother, wife, woman, artist and Korean-American. Layered within the abstract imagery of spiders and their webs, round seeds and pods, earth and sky and rays of sunlight, she strings together larger narratives in a unique storytelling approach that injects a gentle intimacy into the contemporary art world's current narrative trend. In some moments in the show, Lee bares all and reveals in an almost pictographic style the source of her abstracted symbols. For example, on one page, a lima bean shape filled with loose circles is accompanied by the text, "I am a little seed who bears a dream; belly full dream." Instead of resulting in a one-shot interpretation, these dropped hints lead the viewer to follow along her chosen path and engage in a deeper relationship with her forms and narrative.

For those new to her work, this show is the perfect entry point. These sketches and notes offer a direct link with the artist's game plan and thought processes. Understanding her smaller themes provides a foundation for appreciating her more visually complicated installation works. For those familiar with Lee's work, this show may seem sterile at first - the plexiglass boxes lack the warmth and free-flowing character of her large "quilts" and "aprons."

Still the exhibit is a treat. Over time the sketches begin to feel like a friendly class reunion of her classic characters, a reminder of her knack for clean and crisp loveliness. And it is exciting to see how Lee has combined her talents, found in earlier works of oil painting and calligraphic ink, to totally adopt the sewn stitch as what she terms her "primary drawing media."

On the adjacent wall, "Seeds and Garden Flowers" is an installation of 37 round textile pieces, each casually framed in an inexpensive wood needlework hoop and arched over the room's fireplace like floating cloth bubbles. The components include Lee's own sewn works, interspersed and sometimes collaged with antique crocheted doilies and complicated embroidery pieces.

By appropriating the rich history of these feminine handiworks and adding her own contemporary symbols and stitches, Lee juxtaposes old vs. new and intricacy vs. clean simplicity to quietly speak to the changing roles of women, craft and family tradition.

"I touch papers and fabrics; stitching the thread on it; that is my pulse," Lee says.

And her pulse is right on.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
It is an exciting time for Ke-Sook Lee, who is enjoying a career surge. Born in Korea, she moved to the United States in 1964 and has lived in Overland Park since 1971. In the last two years Lee has had solo shows at the Snyderman Gallery in Philadelphia; George Billis Gallery in New York; and Galerie Lefor Openo, in Paris.

She is the recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship award from the Kansas Arts Commission (2004) and won first place in New Media and Installations from the Fourth International Contemporary Art Biennale in Florence, Italy (2003).

Locally her works can be found in the collections of Hallmark, American Century, the Johnson County Community College, Sprint and H&R Block.