The fiber of Korea

By Doug Gruse dgruse@poststar.com | Posted: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 3:15 am | (0) Comments

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courtesy photo New York artst Aimee Lee uses hanji, an ancient Korean paper-making technique, to create modern works of art. Lee's work will be featured in 'Abundance is Real,' a solo show opening Saturday and running through Dec. 18 at the Courthouse Gallery in Lake George.

When artist Aimee Lee was growing up in Westchester County, she felt disconnected from her Korean ancestry.

The daughter of immigrants, Lee spent much of her youth caught between two cultures.

"My parents raised me as a Korean person in America, but not in a Korean community. There was only one other Korean family in the town where I grew up. It was confusing to me," Lee said.

Although she often traveled to Seoul during summer vacations, her parents' native country was a mysterious place with strange customs that didn't match her American ideals.

During a recent year-long art residency in Korea, Lee said she developed a better understanding of the culture - and her own identity.

"I don't speak the language that well. I'm almost fluent, but it's pretty clear I am not a native speaker," she said.

Although she looks Korean to many Americans, people in the country identified her as an outsider.

"I'm very American," she said. "It's a really classic kind of conflict that anyone who looks Korean but didn't grow up there full time has. There's a clash between American culture and Korean culture."

"Abundance Is Real," a solo show of Lee's recent work, opens Saturday and runs through Dec. 18 at the Courthouse Gallery in Lake George. The exhibit will include pieces featuring the hanji paper-making technique Lee learned while studying in Korea.

"The show will include a lot of the paper I acquired and made there and themes and ideas that have been simmering since I got back," Lee said.

The week before the opening, Lee still was attempting to plan the exhibition.

"I was sitting down and doing a map of the show - a narrative - a story of how all these things make sense together," she said.

Part of the show will be a personal exploration of Lee's Korean heritage, or "prehistory" as she likes to call it.

"I've been looking at different ideas of Korean royalty. Growing up, people in my family would say they were descended from royalty," Lee said.

Some of Lee's hanji paperwork emphasizes the green hue from the bark of trees.

"They refer to these jade pieces that were fixed to crowns and gold jewelry in ancient Korea. A lot of those pieces were stolen and raided," she said.

Although the work is a reference to her cultural heritage, she doesn't want the art to have a literal translation.

"Mostly it's about mining into my history and using the paper to express it. I'm not that interested in finding a family tree. I am more interested in ancestral baggage," she said.

Lee sees the second part of the show as being more playful.

"I was using more colors, which I was doing in Korea through natural dying with plants and insects," she said. "I was exploring and weaving with paper."

The papermaker sees the installation itself as part of the artistic journey.

"I'm thinking about rigging the space so it is a gallery within a gallery. Some of the pieces need to be lit from the back. I will have a lot of hanging pieces," she said.

For Lee, the recent trip to Korea was a cathartic experience. Although she felt like a misfit during the first part of her residency, she began to adapt to the culture and understand more about her own connection to the country.

"It helped me reconcile things more. It was OK that I felt conflicted. It made a lot of things make more sense, and it improved my relationship with my parents. I finally understood why they raised me the way they did," Lee said.

Posted in Lifestyles on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 3:15 am Updated: 11:20 am.

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