“Jacqueline Rush Lee defies our expectations of what books can be with fecund meditations on nature and permanence. With a deft hand, Lee explores the material possibilities, drawing parallels between the life-cycles of books and those of humans through forms found in nature”
Jacqueline Rush Lee is a Hawaii-based Artist from Northern Ireland who creates conceptual objects and sites that re-contextualize materials, narrative and history. Her artworks have been featured in various international publications and she has exhibited her work widely. Highlight exhibitions include the Yale Art Gallery (CT), the Fuller Craft Museum, MA, The Hole, (NYC), the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, (CA), Jaus Gallery, (LA) Hui No’Eau Visual Arts Center (HI) and the Contemporary Museum (HI). She is currently exhibiting a solo exhibition of her work entitled Whorl at East Hawai’i Cultural Center, HI.
Jacqueline holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction in Ceramics and a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Hawaii. Her background in Irish Culture, coupled with extensive travel and a studio practice in a remote island location, contribute to a unique world view that has shaped her thinking and making. She is the recipient of awards and residencies that have supported and extended her studio practice into other areas of enquiry and is most recently a recipient of a 2022 Djerassi Artists Program Residency Award and a 2018 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship. As a Visiting Artist and Lecturer she has presented her work at Academic institutions nationally and internationally. Her work is in private and public collections that include the Allan Chasanoff Book Art Collection, Yale Art Gallery (CT), the Honolulu Museum of Art (HI), and the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Art in Public Places (HI). In addition to her mixed-media works, Jacqueline is the founder and Artist-in-Residence at ‘Ohe Kiln House, HI, where she makes one-of-a-kind studio art pottery and ceramic sculpture.
— “Intuitively chosen, the objects, materials or sites that I select suggest layered metaphors of knowledge and corporeality as an embodiment of the transitory nature of the body, thoughts, memories, or one’s life experiences." These recurring or transient themes manifest in art works that express ideas in veiled layers of meaning.—”
Jacqueline Rush Lee - Artist-in-Residence at Djerassi, 2022. Photo Credit: Jewel Carter, CA