Events

In her second solo exhibition at KBAC, Aimee Lee continues to explore the branch of American hanji that she has cultivated for 17 years. Known for her hanji ducks and dresses, on display in the gallery, she has returned to the very material that makes Korean paper. Bast fiber from the paper mulberry tree is usually harvested and processed into fine, long-fibered paper. Here, she forgoes the steps of beating the fiber to a pulp to instead spread, lace, and grid the bark into pieces that serve as a printing matrix, book page, or paper inclusion. The results remake her earlier forms of sculpture, garment, and book, and link her labor to people across the world who fashioned bark substrates for thousands of years.

Aimee will also be teaching a Jiseung Paper Rope workshop on Saturday, October 19, 2024.

Aimee Lee

Born to Korean immigrant parents in Flushing, New York, Aimee Lee is an artist, papermaker, author, and the leading hanji researcher and practitioner in North America (BA, Visual Art, Oberlin College, MFA, Interdisciplinary Book & Paper Arts, Columbia College Chicago). For her culture bearing work, the Ohio Arts Council designated her a Heritage Fellow in 2019.

In 2008–2009, she traveled to Korea as a Fulbright Fellow to learn hanji making and related techniques. Upon her return, she built the first North American hanji studio at the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland and wrote an award-winning book, Hanji Unfurled (The Legacy Press, 2012). In 2014, she continued advanced jiseung (paper basketry) study in Korea and is one of the few US artists with full fluency of this intangible heritage. Her Fulbright Senior Scholar research in 2021 focused on bamboo screens that make hanji. To document this nearly extinct toolmaking process, she studied with national and regional treasures. In 2022 she began annual hanji retreats at her private hanji studio in South Euclid to train a new generation of Korean diaspora students.

Aimee exhibits at museums, galleries, libraries and art centers around the world. She has taught and lectured at the American Museum of Natural History, Asian Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Detroit Institute of Arts, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. Academic teaching includes Oberlin College, MassArt, Mills College, and Cleveland Institute of Art, and she is in high demand at craft centers such as Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Peters Valley School of Craft, Penland School of Crafts, North Bennett Street School, and Women's Studio Workshop.

Chosen by over 15 artist residency programs worldwide, Aimee’s artists’ books and prints reside in library collections that include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Rijksmuseum, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Smithsonian, Stanford, UCLA, Harvard, and Yale. Funders include the US Fulbright Program, Korea Fulbright Foundation, John Anson Kittredge Fund, American Folklore Society, Center for Craft, CERF+, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Ohio Arts Council, Manhattan Graphics Center, and SPACES.