Land scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
Deanna Lee
Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, USA
An artist ' s statement
M
y work— in the form of paintings, drawings, and site-specific installations— stems from patterns and traces of growth and decay in the natural world and the built environment. I grew up seeing electron micrographs and lab specimens, and I am still engrossed by abstracted images of nature. In my works, masses of lines evoke various influences: organic forms like hair, muscles, and fungi; natural systems such as waves and wind currents; geological strata; and topographical maps. These linear networks are often based on hand-drawn records of physical effects of nature in my immediate surroundings— like a bent plane around a window, a sloping floor, or the decaying walls in my former studio. My process includes making tracings and rubbings of surfaces like plywood and cracking plaster. I think of these marks as the calligraphic signatures of quotidian natural effects and as personal interpretations of the material evidence of time. I am invested in the hand-drawn line for its conveyance of individualism, imperfection, and fragility, and I see my use of line as a tenuous analogy to traditional Asian ink painting. I strive to delineate the emotional resonance that I see in forms made by natural forces.
Deanna Lee
Deanna was born in Carmel, New York, to parents from China and Taiwan, and grew up in suburban Boston. After years of classical music training on several instruments, she received degrees in art from Oberlin College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and she studied at the Rome campus of the Tyler School of Art.
She has had solo exhibitions at Robert Henry Contemporary, Wave Hill, and PS122 in New York City; and Artemisia Gallery, Chicago. Her work has appeared in group shows at numerous venues, including: The Drawing Center, Abrons Art Center, NURTUREart, and Schema Projects in New York City; Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago; SPACES in Cleveland; and George Mason University, Virginia.
Deanna’ s public art works include a 700-foot-long mural on bicycle path barriers in Queens, commissioned by the NYC Department of Transportation; and a design for tree guards in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in Brooklyn.
Her awards and honors include: a Pollock-Krasner grant, Asia Society travel grant, BRIC Media Fellowship, Manhattan Graphics Center Scholarship, two grants from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and Abbey Mural Fellowship, National Academy. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Millay Colony and at Saltonstall Foundation.