Vase I (detail 2), via her website.
This week a couple of blogs (1, 2) have profiled Hong Kong native and Pittsburgh-based papercutting artist Bovey Lee. An excerpt from her artistic statement:
My narrative-based cut paper explores the tension between man and the environment in the context of power, sacrifice, and survival. These three “motivators,” as I call them, drive all our desires and behaviors toward one another and the environment. We live in a time when we overdo everything from technology to urbanization to consumption. My recent work is informed by our precarious relationship with nature in the twenty-first century, i.e., what we do to the environment with our super machines and technologies and what nature does back to us in reaction.
I hand cut each work on a single sheet of Chinese xuan (rice) paper backed with silk and both are renewable and eco-friendly materials.
Lee is currently part of an exhibition in Denver. Her most recent installation in Pittsburgh was "Folding Chairs" in 2011.
I am interested in folding chairs because of their temporality and portability, providing both physical and psychological comfort for travelers in anticipation of adventures. In Pittsburgh, there is a common practice of deploying folding chairs in the streets to claim parking spaces and seats along parade routes. The wide range of styles in folding chairs also represent the diverse personalities and tastes of their owners.
From "Folding Chairs", via her website.
More words and pictures on boveylee.com.
