Lee Lee
Installation view: Painting of a hummingbird in a Central American rainforest at NeoRio 2016 to speak to migration. The theme of the event was 'Pollinate' & was hosted by LEAP (Land Environment & Art of Place) in the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in Northern New Mexico
Aerial view of the DOW chemical plant, watercolor, gouache & pencil over a silkscreen of melted plastic
The Debris installation as part of the Envisioning Networked Urban Mobilities exhibition at the University of Aalborg, Copenhagen
The Debris Project installation as part of the With the Earth program at the Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station near the CA National Seashore
Turtle swimming in a plastic ocean watercolor collaged with torched plastic
Inspired by natural ecologies, Lee Lee is a visual artist who cultivates ‘creative ecologies’ to explore human intersections with the natural world. Starting with the meditative act of figurative and landscape painting, her thematic work grows into community engagements that address social and ecological issues presented by a post-industrial, chemical age. She delights in developing a contemporary arts practice in remote places in order to understand the broader impacts of the way we live now. The methodology that has evolved through carrying the Debris Project (a collaboration confronting plastic pollution) across the seven seas is now informing an emerging collaborative practice around seeds. After curating the SEED :: disperse exhibit at the Dairy Arts Center, she is cultivating collaborations that focus on food security and wildlands restoration in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico, the North Woods of Maine and in the Red Zones of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Following the wisdom of elders, the work developed around seeds grows from native and traditional practice that is very specific to the landscape within which it propagates. For example, as the featured artist at NeoRio hosted by LEAP (Land, Experience and Art of Place) in the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, she offers tools to participants to grow pollinator habitat in a way that broadens perceptions of home and explores the interrelationships between pollinators and humans. As a backdrop for the creative act, she displays large landscape paintings of oil refineries and an aerial view of the DOW chemical plant in order to contextualize the act of wildflower seed distribution in the face of the chemical confrontations that pollinators face now.
She has developed a process oriented practice that conveys emotional textures within communities facing environmental disruption based on direct experience in over 50 countries. Her current projects incorporate demonstrations of resilience by diverse communities as they face ecological adversity. Integrating a figurative tradition into the emergent fields of social engagement, her projects address global issues on a hyper local level by collaborating with grass roots organizations. While formal presentations of her work allow for contributions to institutionalized discourse, she maintains a focus on social and environmental advocacy on a ground level.
Collaborative works may be found at www.virtualvoices.org