Bamboo Installation by Jonathan Goodman
Seung Lee is a mature painter who came to America from Korea when he was 15. He has since become a painter teaching at Long Island University, where he works with undergraduates and graduates. In the last 7 years, he has established quite a considerable bamboo grove behind his house. at times, so dense as to be impossible to see through. The bamboo, certainly beautiful in any environment, is also of course a symbol of the resilience of Asian culture. The tall, slim poles become an unspoken argument in favor of the Korean mind and esthetics, the center of Seung Lee’s improvisatory efforts to incorporate Asian intelligence within a context considerably far from his first home. He is, by now, a poet of Western sympathies, but Asian influence never leaves his brush. His brush marks, of the bamboo especially, radiate the expansive assertion we so often associate with abstract expressionism. We cannot simply say Western art, usually the structure of Lee’s art, dominates his aesthetic. The graceful lines outlining the bamboo, remain, as we have noted, profoundly associated with Eastern culture. Certainly today, especially now, art is a matter of the transformation of many influences, not the occurrence of one way of thinking. By maintaining an outlook that incorporates many considerations from many different places, the artist pays homage to a point of view that embraces diversity. The question is whether that diversity leads to a greater or lesser understanding of culture in general.
In Lee’s case, his installation, a composite of several smaller installations, takes place within a shed quite close to the former home of a farm near the north fork of Long Island. The scenery is a mixture of rural and suburban: houses sitting on low hills, beside curving roads, frame the space around the shed. Lee made good art use of this defunct farm, now not much more than a small meadow; while across the road there exists the first hotel in Suffolk County. Inside the shed, there are paintings and bamboo; green clumps of moss hang from the ceilings. Corners of the shed hold paintings of bamboo, bamboo itself, green flora hanging in bunches from the ceiling–even a thick panel standing in the middle of the interior space, with a few windows lending light and an extended view of grass.
To fully appreciate the installation, one has to imagine the implicit oppositions that result from the scattered mix of materials implying differences many today might well take for granted in art and culture, given today’s eclecticism. Certainly, bamboo is hardly a harbinger of dominant Asian thinking, yet it is far more available, physically and psychically, than it used to be in the West, as a material representative, both physically and symbolically, of a culture originating from far away. Lee belongs to the recent, large immigration movement, active for several decades in America for artists, this movement, so lyrically voiced in this show, supports an ongoing diversity now embraced in art made nearly everywhere.? As time goes on, we seem to be moving toward a monoculture, albeit one created by many kinds of people. Imaginative advance stems from diversity, but it can also lead to excessive eclecticism, resulting in too many points of view, it is interesting to note that Lee’s exhibition is only a few miles from his home, where some acre of standing bamboo grace the area behind his house. Yet Lee’s aesthetic cannot be called fully Asian. The mixture is what counts.
As interesting as this discussion might be, partly because we come from everywhere, the measure of the show is its authenticity as art. Lee’s work is genuinely a true remark about the cultural differences that have taken over America–changes that carry a weight we may not understand so easily. This means that the art he makes has political implications, which can increase his point of a mixed vision. Psychological conflict becomes part of the work’s outlook. The shed comes from a world and time a good way apart from where Lee grew up. But it also suggests a classicism that comes from Lee did not move from a foreign culture. The strength of his translation takes art as its premise, but its core is historical: the passage of centuries in which art has become a reading of quiet but inevitable change.
Change thus becomes a vector of psychic acceptance as well as visions based on more than a few backgrounds. But the primary goal is visual–it is up to every artist to take his materials at hand and transform them into a moving mixture of historical awareness and the by-now-familiar vivacity of something not yet invented. Good art most often does both, although new work usually has the upper hand, in the sense we have not seen the object before and it can startle us with its originality. Still, bamboo’s ancient use as a theme in creativity gives it a gravitas that expands its meaning to represent continuity, even the seeming eternity we associate with nature. Nothing lasts forever, but it can seem so in light of the permanency of the materials used and the perfection of the craft shaping them,
Because we are living in times notable for their speed, our perception tends to race as it makes sense of what we see. But the speed of our gaze tends to lead nowhere, being an unnecessary attribute–a moment without meaning. Lee searches for, a middle ground, in which the contrasts he describes so well become experiments in cultural visions set apart from each other. In a culture devoted to speed, the slow movement of Long Island’s water is matched by the time it takes to grow a grove of bamboo. As art is motionless, the entirety lacking in motion in Lee’s show clarifies how the gaze has time to differentiate between differences we haven’t gotten used to. In its broad references, the exhibition uses the present to bring us up-to-date
“Multifariousness” at Mizuma and Kips Gallery by Jonathan Goodman
April 21-May 9, 2021
Seung Lee, an artist teaching at Long Island University, has curated “Multifariousness,” a show of his work and that of four students. The artists range in age from their twenties to their seventies and include one person still in school. They also represent a broad spectrum of styles, abstract and figurative. Lee has created this show in response to the corona virus quarantine, demonstrating that despite the pandemic, people continue to make art as a way of creating a meaningful dialogue between themselves and others. Art, Lee believes, builds a bridge between people even in the most difficult of times, as this show makes clear.
Seung Lee is a highly recognized artist who has also taught for 32 years. His drawings in this show reflect his Korean background: Bamboo in Fog (2021) beautifully captures the plant; the tall, narrow stalks cross over each other In green and blue. It can be seen as an ecological plea. Chris Ann Ambry, well known as a printmaker, includes among her works the print Lean on Me (2021), a scene of a forest enveloped by an orange haze below and a net-like canopy above. Her lyricism is remarkable. Kandi Spindler makes narrow, lozenge shaped multimedia sculpture. Bohemian Deco (2021), multicolored, made of glass, acrylic, and wood, has an unusually rough surface that intensifies its interest as an object of beauty. Carol Kingston offers The Lightness of Being (2019-20), a mixed-medic painting that looks like an aerial image of water and land, taken as a photograph by a satellite. Its blues and tans are strikingly attractive, emphasizing nature on a large scale. And the photographic work of Long Island University student Olivia Castagna, in the case of Don’t Let Me Ruin Me (2021), can be stark and dramatic. In this self-portrait, the artist stands with her back to us, without clothes. Two disembodied hands grip her on the left side.
“Multifariousness” expresses a broad range of styles and sensibilities, celebrating art’s inevitable pluralism in a time when no particular way of working holds sway. The artists in this group example a broad age range, proving that fine art can be practiced along the lifespan. Also, this work was made during the time of quarantine, proving as well that very good work can be created in times of considerable stress. Seung Lee’s long tenure as a teacher has made him particularly sensitive to the nuanced, differing styles of his students, who clearly enjoyed freedom under his tutelage. Lee, like the others, has more than a lot to offer in this show, which emphasizes diversity of thought, feeling, and craft. In a time when expression seems to be moving in the direction of a narrow sensibility, “Multifariousness” proves that fine art can successfully maintain its broad character.
Seung Lee’s Life, by Jay Kwang Lim's
Seung Lee, whose original name is Seung Hwi Lee, is a professor at Long Island University, C. W. Post Campus, in Brookville, New York. His life is very dramatic, very much like other immigrants who made their American dream come true. He was born as the youngest son among six brothers in Ga-Pyung, Kyung Gi Do, in Korea. After his father passed away when Seung was six, his life was hard. His mother became ill and he and his brothers had to drop out of school in order to find work. When he was 15 years of age, his uncle-in-law, who served as an American soldier in Korea, brought Seung’s whole family to America. The United States of America was an ideal world for him compared to his financial struggle in Korea.
Seung was asked to leave school in Korea because he couldn’t pay the tuition, but in the USA, schooling was free. Despite his awkward English and the difference between Korean culture and American culture, Seung began to show his ability as a talented young artist. Due to his sociable personality, he became better acquainted with the English language. In high school, he excelled in art, math and physical education. He was lucky to have a great art teacher in high school that saw talent in Seung, took him under his wing, and helped him get a scholarship to the Maryland Art Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. This was hard on his family because they preferred him to become involved in their family business.
During Seung’s junior year in college, he received a scholarship to study art in Italy. While there, he learned not only about art but also about the differences in cultures. Seung felt this was one of the most important transitional periods in his life to becoming an artist. His perspective broadened, and he was more accepting of the differences in art. Being alone in Italy forced him to reflect on his life and plans for his future.
On returning from Italy, he attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, for his MFA in painting. He worked as a taxi driver in order to support his family and to have a job that was flexible enough for him to work on his art. Ik-Joong Kang, Soo-Choen Joen, Hyun-Jung Shin, and Ee-So Park (Mo Bac) were his classmates who were a few acquaintances he knew from Korea.
When expecting his second child, Seung moved to Long Island, New York, for a better environment to raise his children, Rose and Hannah. Living in this suburban community brought back early childhood memories, and this is recognized in his contributions to the Long Island art community, his exhibitions, art competition judging, curating shows, and service as a panelist for grants, guest artist lectures, etc.
Seung taught drawing and painting at St. Josephs College, Dowling College, and Long Island University/C. W. Post Campus. In 2001, he became a full-time professor and Director of Graduate Studies and Fine Arts at Long Island University. He is one of the most respected art professors at the University.
Seung Lee has coached his daughter’s soccer teams for years and he still plays soccer for Long Island soccer clubs. His students and colleagues admire his openness to different activities and his optimistic character.Seung Lee’s recent work is a telling example of art as a psychological tool of healing and renewal. The effort to escape the past is always betrayed by the persistence and the strength of the unconscious, seeping through the layers of consciousness, and letting us know that the initial effort was indeed in vain. The more healthy and adaptable way of handling the past, both pleasant and unpleasant aspects of it, seems to be by reevaluating it in terms of the present. The artist armed with this knowledge, deals with his past through his art by rethinking, reshaping, reforming and recycling it, and thus establishing the feeling of total control of the present over the past. Earlier work, referring to the past decades is not destroyed or discarded, but instead it is cut and cast in resin molds, and inserted in old bottles, or displayed in elaborate frames. The work, just like the past it refers to, is now controlled and contained, suggesting perhaps a weakening effect. Neither the work, nor the past is what it used to be, but still beautiful and valid in a new and different way. As the artist accepts and accommodates the past through the manipulation of his art, and finally as the past becomes part of the present, a newly achieved mastery and control of life emerges that often leads to healing and renewal.
essay on Seung lee's art, by Nese Karakaplan, Director, Alpan Gallery, New York, USA
Seung Lee’s recent work is a telling example of art as a psychological tool of healing and renewal. The effort to escape the past is always betrayed by the persistence and the strength of the unconscious, seeping through the layers of consciousness, and letting us know that the initial effort was indeed in vain. The more healthy and adaptable way of handling the past, both pleasant and unpleasant aspects of it, seems to be by reevaluating it in terms of the present. The artist armed with this knowledge, deals with his past through his art by rethinking, reshaping, reforming and recycling it, and thus establishing the feeling of total control of the present over the past. Earlier work, referring to the past decades is not destroyed or discarded, but instead it is cut and cast in resin molds, and inserted in old bottles, or displayed in elaborate frames. The work, just like the past it refers to, is now controlled and contained, suggesting perhaps a weakening effect. Neither the work, nor the past is what it used to be, but still beautiful and valid in a new and different way. As the artist accepts and accommodates the past through the manipulation of his art, and finally as the past becomes part of the present, a newly achieved mastery and control of life emerges that often leads to healing and renewal.
essay on Seung lee by Lis Dreizen, Artist, 2005
Paying homage to our past, catalyzing reflection towards spirited thought, this is the work of Seung Lee. His precepts have been wrought through the spoils of an artist’s life, events recorded long ago and now revealed in attenuated bytes of recollection. These parings, these diffused writs of line and color, provide evidence of a prior existence, cut free from their original and large scaled paintings. His pieces are captured in the evocative assembly of diverse vintage bottles or, conversely, in small, conventional plastic bags meticulously framed and set on the wall. In either case, Lee sculpts his resin- based tessellated narratives with exacting intention. His has been a journey that spans the globe to chase the sirens’ song of art. His ardent dreams are defined by his choice of media, worked with delicate articulation, their significance forever pressed like millefiori in equal measures of power and precision. Lee’s transcribed ideals, dipped in the paint pots of memory, sanguine and timeless, now speak to us from a new vista, captured in their resolute significance behind the squat orbs of glass, and the ornate frames of aesthetic civility. It is through this process that we are captured in the redolence of the past, by the promise of future, and the perennial nexus of the two. To reflect upon the ephemeral passages of life as well as the constant nature of energy is at the foundation of Lee’s discipline. What once was, always will be, returning anew in transformed semblance. The philosophy is both simple and complex, unfolding as we witness the ephemera, torn leaves from the pages of one man’s history, edging against the translucent glass orbs in the context of “now”. Picking up the scattered memories along the trail towards today is Seung Lee. With resilience and the prospect of new beginnings, Lee refuses to render his past obsolete, but instead rescues the detritus of his life from the darkness of the dust bin to reestablish his work in a newly rendered landscape.
As a professor of art, Lee continues this theme of redemption in the less tangible yet equally resounding context of academia. In the classroom he commits to the same paradigm as illustrated in the studio, his teaching methods running parallel with his creative philosophy. With genuine supplication and interest, Lee is steadfast in his respect for the comments dispensed by his pupils as they react to various works of art. He treats the statements as truly relevant contributions, purveying each as though it held the potential for great insight. We, often speaking in somewhat disjointed phrases common only to tired, late night students, are perpetually struck by his unwavering and thereby disconcerting attention. He appears to be searching for some barely audible truth or recognition which his gaze intently needs to secure. Our viewpoints are the remnants of our past come to repose in the present, our memories and intuition formulating the hazy substance of opinion. This is the polestar of Lee’s ambition. He waits silently as we complete the last bit of our verbal meanderings. Then, always, there is a pause. He refrains from speaking. His eyes return to the subject on the pin- holed walls, and once again to us, as if, perchance, there was still more, something left unspoken. We search ourselves. Is there more? We seek a deeper counsel. It is through this approach that Lee cultivates an awareness of the inner voice in his students, validating a spirit that would otherwise have been overlooked. We have become the amphoras of information spilled by the hand of our professor’s unfaltering trust. When queried, Lee contends that he in fact awaits the reactions of his students in sincere expectation of unique insights. These, he explains, augment the spirit of his creativity as he capitalizes upon our comments to benefit his own art. Thus, in trying to divine the substance of what we had deemed mere refuse, Lee rescues our subjective reactions and renders them inviolable. His expectation gives voice to our spirit. And in this we are elevated, beginning to measure our importance by the warrant of his respect. We become more than we had been. We rise to his occasion, our words framed like ciphers in reverence on the wall.
SEUNG LEE AS TEACHER AND ARTIST, by Kristin Rufo, MFA, Artist, teacher, and former student
Professor Seung Lee plays a lot of roles: artist, father, educator, friend, and administrator. As a former Graduate Assistant of Professor Lee’s, I have watched in awe as he balances the many aspects of his life with grace. Not only does Professor Lee move effortlessly through his day, accommodating his work, his family, and his duties as a teacher and administrator, but he also moves with enthusiasm and excitement.
As a professor of Art at Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus, in New York, Seung Lee is the professor the students pray to have the opportunity to study under. It is evident to the students that Professor Lee’s investment in them is unparalleled, and his enthusiasm permeates the classroom, and excites his pupils. In the classroom, artistic freedom is of utmost importance. While students are expected to defend their work, and provide reasons for their mark making and subject matter, Seung guides them and gives them the tools to be successful, independent artists. He is available to them in ways other teachers are not, and he takes a vested interest in their progress and future.
As Professor Lee’s Graduate Assistant, I observed his teaching skills and interactions with students, and learned tremendously from him. My own teaching strategies and ideas are inspired by watching him, and just like with his students, he is always available for counsel and support. I cannot imagine completing my Masters degree under a more supportive Graduate Director.
To Professor Lee, the goal of being an artist and making work is not about the product or object the artist produces; the meaning is much deeper than that. Professor Lee’s goal as an artist extends to the communication the artist has with the object he or she produces, the interaction between the viewer and the object, and the communication between artists and viewers themselves. These are the principles he extends to his students. He teaches them, and he taught me, that art is about sharing something inside of you, something personal, on a level that is almost spiritual. When Seung teaches, he implements this idea in the classroom. He shares his whole self with students, and guides them from an open place within himself. Students recognize this, and gravitate towards it.
In his twenty years of teaching, Professor Lee has impacted many young, emerging artists in such an important way, and I predict, as Professor Lee continues to teach, his enthusiasm and passion for art and teaching will continue to guide and influence students for years to come. As a former student, his influence on my work, philosophy and behavior as an artist and educator is unparalleled.
Seung Lee is a mature painter who came to America from Korea when he was 15. He has since become a painter teaching at Long Island University, where he works with undergraduates and graduates. In the last 7 years, he has established quite a considerable bamboo grove behind his house. at times, so dense as to be impossible to see through. The bamboo, certainly beautiful in any environment, is also of course a symbol of the resilience of Asian culture. The tall, slim poles become an unspoken argument in favor of the Korean mind and esthetics, the center of Seung Lee’s improvisatory efforts to incorporate Asian intelligence within a context considerably far from his first home. He is, by now, a poet of Western sympathies, but Asian influence never leaves his brush. His brush marks, of the bamboo especially, radiate the expansive assertion we so often associate with abstract expressionism. We cannot simply say Western art, usually the structure of Lee’s art, dominates his aesthetic. The graceful lines outlining the bamboo, remain, as we have noted, profoundly associated with Eastern culture. Certainly today, especially now, art is a matter of the transformation of many influences, not the occurrence of one way of thinking. By maintaining an outlook that incorporates many considerations from many different places, the artist pays homage to a point of view that embraces diversity. The question is whether that diversity leads to a greater or lesser understanding of culture in general.
In Lee’s case, his installation, a composite of several smaller installations, takes place within a shed quite close to the former home of a farm near the north fork of Long Island. The scenery is a mixture of rural and suburban: houses sitting on low hills, beside curving roads, frame the space around the shed. Lee made good art use of this defunct farm, now not much more than a small meadow; while across the road there exists the first hotel in Suffolk County. Inside the shed, there are paintings and bamboo; green clumps of moss hang from the ceilings. Corners of the shed hold paintings of bamboo, bamboo itself, green flora hanging in bunches from the ceiling–even a thick panel standing in the middle of the interior space, with a few windows lending light and an extended view of grass.
To fully appreciate the installation, one has to imagine the implicit oppositions that result from the scattered mix of materials implying differences many today might well take for granted in art and culture, given today’s eclecticism. Certainly, bamboo is hardly a harbinger of dominant Asian thinking, yet it is far more available, physically and psychically, than it used to be in the West, as a material representative, both physically and symbolically, of a culture originating from far away. Lee belongs to the recent, large immigration movement, active for several decades in America for artists, this movement, so lyrically voiced in this show, supports an ongoing diversity now embraced in art made nearly everywhere.? As time goes on, we seem to be moving toward a monoculture, albeit one created by many kinds of people. Imaginative advance stems from diversity, but it can also lead to excessive eclecticism, resulting in too many points of view, it is interesting to note that Lee’s exhibition is only a few miles from his home, where some acre of standing bamboo grace the area behind his house. Yet Lee’s aesthetic cannot be called fully Asian. The mixture is what counts.
As interesting as this discussion might be, partly because we come from everywhere, the measure of the show is its authenticity as art. Lee’s work is genuinely a true remark about the cultural differences that have taken over America–changes that carry a weight we may not understand so easily. This means that the art he makes has political implications, which can increase his point of a mixed vision. Psychological conflict becomes part of the work’s outlook. The shed comes from a world and time a good way apart from where Lee grew up. But it also suggests a classicism that comes from Lee did not move from a foreign culture. The strength of his translation takes art as its premise, but its core is historical: the passage of centuries in which art has become a reading of quiet but inevitable change.
Change thus becomes a vector of psychic acceptance as well as visions based on more than a few backgrounds. But the primary goal is visual–it is up to every artist to take his materials at hand and transform them into a moving mixture of historical awareness and the by-now-familiar vivacity of something not yet invented. Good art most often does both, although new work usually has the upper hand, in the sense we have not seen the object before and it can startle us with its originality. Still, bamboo’s ancient use as a theme in creativity gives it a gravitas that expands its meaning to represent continuity, even the seeming eternity we associate with nature. Nothing lasts forever, but it can seem so in light of the permanency of the materials used and the perfection of the craft shaping them,
Because we are living in times notable for their speed, our perception tends to race as it makes sense of what we see. But the speed of our gaze tends to lead nowhere, being an unnecessary attribute–a moment without meaning. Lee searches for, a middle ground, in which the contrasts he describes so well become experiments in cultural visions set apart from each other. In a culture devoted to speed, the slow movement of Long Island’s water is matched by the time it takes to grow a grove of bamboo. As art is motionless, the entirety lacking in motion in Lee’s show clarifies how the gaze has time to differentiate between differences we haven’t gotten used to. In its broad references, the exhibition uses the present to bring us up-to-date
“Multifariousness” at Mizuma and Kips Gallery by Jonathan Goodman
April 21-May 9, 2021
Seung Lee, an artist teaching at Long Island University, has curated “Multifariousness,” a show of his work and that of four students. The artists range in age from their twenties to their seventies and include one person still in school. They also represent a broad spectrum of styles, abstract and figurative. Lee has created this show in response to the corona virus quarantine, demonstrating that despite the pandemic, people continue to make art as a way of creating a meaningful dialogue between themselves and others. Art, Lee believes, builds a bridge between people even in the most difficult of times, as this show makes clear.
Seung Lee is a highly recognized artist who has also taught for 32 years. His drawings in this show reflect his Korean background: Bamboo in Fog (2021) beautifully captures the plant; the tall, narrow stalks cross over each other In green and blue. It can be seen as an ecological plea. Chris Ann Ambry, well known as a printmaker, includes among her works the print Lean on Me (2021), a scene of a forest enveloped by an orange haze below and a net-like canopy above. Her lyricism is remarkable. Kandi Spindler makes narrow, lozenge shaped multimedia sculpture. Bohemian Deco (2021), multicolored, made of glass, acrylic, and wood, has an unusually rough surface that intensifies its interest as an object of beauty. Carol Kingston offers The Lightness of Being (2019-20), a mixed-medic painting that looks like an aerial image of water and land, taken as a photograph by a satellite. Its blues and tans are strikingly attractive, emphasizing nature on a large scale. And the photographic work of Long Island University student Olivia Castagna, in the case of Don’t Let Me Ruin Me (2021), can be stark and dramatic. In this self-portrait, the artist stands with her back to us, without clothes. Two disembodied hands grip her on the left side.
“Multifariousness” expresses a broad range of styles and sensibilities, celebrating art’s inevitable pluralism in a time when no particular way of working holds sway. The artists in this group example a broad age range, proving that fine art can be practiced along the lifespan. Also, this work was made during the time of quarantine, proving as well that very good work can be created in times of considerable stress. Seung Lee’s long tenure as a teacher has made him particularly sensitive to the nuanced, differing styles of his students, who clearly enjoyed freedom under his tutelage. Lee, like the others, has more than a lot to offer in this show, which emphasizes diversity of thought, feeling, and craft. In a time when expression seems to be moving in the direction of a narrow sensibility, “Multifariousness” proves that fine art can successfully maintain its broad character.
Seung Lee’s Life, by Jay Kwang Lim's
Seung Lee, whose original name is Seung Hwi Lee, is a professor at Long Island University, C. W. Post Campus, in Brookville, New York. His life is very dramatic, very much like other immigrants who made their American dream come true. He was born as the youngest son among six brothers in Ga-Pyung, Kyung Gi Do, in Korea. After his father passed away when Seung was six, his life was hard. His mother became ill and he and his brothers had to drop out of school in order to find work. When he was 15 years of age, his uncle-in-law, who served as an American soldier in Korea, brought Seung’s whole family to America. The United States of America was an ideal world for him compared to his financial struggle in Korea.
Seung was asked to leave school in Korea because he couldn’t pay the tuition, but in the USA, schooling was free. Despite his awkward English and the difference between Korean culture and American culture, Seung began to show his ability as a talented young artist. Due to his sociable personality, he became better acquainted with the English language. In high school, he excelled in art, math and physical education. He was lucky to have a great art teacher in high school that saw talent in Seung, took him under his wing, and helped him get a scholarship to the Maryland Art Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. This was hard on his family because they preferred him to become involved in their family business.
During Seung’s junior year in college, he received a scholarship to study art in Italy. While there, he learned not only about art but also about the differences in cultures. Seung felt this was one of the most important transitional periods in his life to becoming an artist. His perspective broadened, and he was more accepting of the differences in art. Being alone in Italy forced him to reflect on his life and plans for his future.
On returning from Italy, he attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, for his MFA in painting. He worked as a taxi driver in order to support his family and to have a job that was flexible enough for him to work on his art. Ik-Joong Kang, Soo-Choen Joen, Hyun-Jung Shin, and Ee-So Park (Mo Bac) were his classmates who were a few acquaintances he knew from Korea.
When expecting his second child, Seung moved to Long Island, New York, for a better environment to raise his children, Rose and Hannah. Living in this suburban community brought back early childhood memories, and this is recognized in his contributions to the Long Island art community, his exhibitions, art competition judging, curating shows, and service as a panelist for grants, guest artist lectures, etc.
Seung taught drawing and painting at St. Josephs College, Dowling College, and Long Island University/C. W. Post Campus. In 2001, he became a full-time professor and Director of Graduate Studies and Fine Arts at Long Island University. He is one of the most respected art professors at the University.
Seung Lee has coached his daughter’s soccer teams for years and he still plays soccer for Long Island soccer clubs. His students and colleagues admire his openness to different activities and his optimistic character.Seung Lee’s recent work is a telling example of art as a psychological tool of healing and renewal. The effort to escape the past is always betrayed by the persistence and the strength of the unconscious, seeping through the layers of consciousness, and letting us know that the initial effort was indeed in vain. The more healthy and adaptable way of handling the past, both pleasant and unpleasant aspects of it, seems to be by reevaluating it in terms of the present. The artist armed with this knowledge, deals with his past through his art by rethinking, reshaping, reforming and recycling it, and thus establishing the feeling of total control of the present over the past. Earlier work, referring to the past decades is not destroyed or discarded, but instead it is cut and cast in resin molds, and inserted in old bottles, or displayed in elaborate frames. The work, just like the past it refers to, is now controlled and contained, suggesting perhaps a weakening effect. Neither the work, nor the past is what it used to be, but still beautiful and valid in a new and different way. As the artist accepts and accommodates the past through the manipulation of his art, and finally as the past becomes part of the present, a newly achieved mastery and control of life emerges that often leads to healing and renewal.
essay on Seung lee's art, by Nese Karakaplan, Director, Alpan Gallery, New York, USA
Seung Lee’s recent work is a telling example of art as a psychological tool of healing and renewal. The effort to escape the past is always betrayed by the persistence and the strength of the unconscious, seeping through the layers of consciousness, and letting us know that the initial effort was indeed in vain. The more healthy and adaptable way of handling the past, both pleasant and unpleasant aspects of it, seems to be by reevaluating it in terms of the present. The artist armed with this knowledge, deals with his past through his art by rethinking, reshaping, reforming and recycling it, and thus establishing the feeling of total control of the present over the past. Earlier work, referring to the past decades is not destroyed or discarded, but instead it is cut and cast in resin molds, and inserted in old bottles, or displayed in elaborate frames. The work, just like the past it refers to, is now controlled and contained, suggesting perhaps a weakening effect. Neither the work, nor the past is what it used to be, but still beautiful and valid in a new and different way. As the artist accepts and accommodates the past through the manipulation of his art, and finally as the past becomes part of the present, a newly achieved mastery and control of life emerges that often leads to healing and renewal.
essay on Seung lee by Lis Dreizen, Artist, 2005
Paying homage to our past, catalyzing reflection towards spirited thought, this is the work of Seung Lee. His precepts have been wrought through the spoils of an artist’s life, events recorded long ago and now revealed in attenuated bytes of recollection. These parings, these diffused writs of line and color, provide evidence of a prior existence, cut free from their original and large scaled paintings. His pieces are captured in the evocative assembly of diverse vintage bottles or, conversely, in small, conventional plastic bags meticulously framed and set on the wall. In either case, Lee sculpts his resin- based tessellated narratives with exacting intention. His has been a journey that spans the globe to chase the sirens’ song of art. His ardent dreams are defined by his choice of media, worked with delicate articulation, their significance forever pressed like millefiori in equal measures of power and precision. Lee’s transcribed ideals, dipped in the paint pots of memory, sanguine and timeless, now speak to us from a new vista, captured in their resolute significance behind the squat orbs of glass, and the ornate frames of aesthetic civility. It is through this process that we are captured in the redolence of the past, by the promise of future, and the perennial nexus of the two. To reflect upon the ephemeral passages of life as well as the constant nature of energy is at the foundation of Lee’s discipline. What once was, always will be, returning anew in transformed semblance. The philosophy is both simple and complex, unfolding as we witness the ephemera, torn leaves from the pages of one man’s history, edging against the translucent glass orbs in the context of “now”. Picking up the scattered memories along the trail towards today is Seung Lee. With resilience and the prospect of new beginnings, Lee refuses to render his past obsolete, but instead rescues the detritus of his life from the darkness of the dust bin to reestablish his work in a newly rendered landscape.
As a professor of art, Lee continues this theme of redemption in the less tangible yet equally resounding context of academia. In the classroom he commits to the same paradigm as illustrated in the studio, his teaching methods running parallel with his creative philosophy. With genuine supplication and interest, Lee is steadfast in his respect for the comments dispensed by his pupils as they react to various works of art. He treats the statements as truly relevant contributions, purveying each as though it held the potential for great insight. We, often speaking in somewhat disjointed phrases common only to tired, late night students, are perpetually struck by his unwavering and thereby disconcerting attention. He appears to be searching for some barely audible truth or recognition which his gaze intently needs to secure. Our viewpoints are the remnants of our past come to repose in the present, our memories and intuition formulating the hazy substance of opinion. This is the polestar of Lee’s ambition. He waits silently as we complete the last bit of our verbal meanderings. Then, always, there is a pause. He refrains from speaking. His eyes return to the subject on the pin- holed walls, and once again to us, as if, perchance, there was still more, something left unspoken. We search ourselves. Is there more? We seek a deeper counsel. It is through this approach that Lee cultivates an awareness of the inner voice in his students, validating a spirit that would otherwise have been overlooked. We have become the amphoras of information spilled by the hand of our professor’s unfaltering trust. When queried, Lee contends that he in fact awaits the reactions of his students in sincere expectation of unique insights. These, he explains, augment the spirit of his creativity as he capitalizes upon our comments to benefit his own art. Thus, in trying to divine the substance of what we had deemed mere refuse, Lee rescues our subjective reactions and renders them inviolable. His expectation gives voice to our spirit. And in this we are elevated, beginning to measure our importance by the warrant of his respect. We become more than we had been. We rise to his occasion, our words framed like ciphers in reverence on the wall.
SEUNG LEE AS TEACHER AND ARTIST, by Kristin Rufo, MFA, Artist, teacher, and former student
Professor Seung Lee plays a lot of roles: artist, father, educator, friend, and administrator. As a former Graduate Assistant of Professor Lee’s, I have watched in awe as he balances the many aspects of his life with grace. Not only does Professor Lee move effortlessly through his day, accommodating his work, his family, and his duties as a teacher and administrator, but he also moves with enthusiasm and excitement.
As a professor of Art at Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus, in New York, Seung Lee is the professor the students pray to have the opportunity to study under. It is evident to the students that Professor Lee’s investment in them is unparalleled, and his enthusiasm permeates the classroom, and excites his pupils. In the classroom, artistic freedom is of utmost importance. While students are expected to defend their work, and provide reasons for their mark making and subject matter, Seung guides them and gives them the tools to be successful, independent artists. He is available to them in ways other teachers are not, and he takes a vested interest in their progress and future.
As Professor Lee’s Graduate Assistant, I observed his teaching skills and interactions with students, and learned tremendously from him. My own teaching strategies and ideas are inspired by watching him, and just like with his students, he is always available for counsel and support. I cannot imagine completing my Masters degree under a more supportive Graduate Director.
To Professor Lee, the goal of being an artist and making work is not about the product or object the artist produces; the meaning is much deeper than that. Professor Lee’s goal as an artist extends to the communication the artist has with the object he or she produces, the interaction between the viewer and the object, and the communication between artists and viewers themselves. These are the principles he extends to his students. He teaches them, and he taught me, that art is about sharing something inside of you, something personal, on a level that is almost spiritual. When Seung teaches, he implements this idea in the classroom. He shares his whole self with students, and guides them from an open place within himself. Students recognize this, and gravitate towards it.
In his twenty years of teaching, Professor Lee has impacted many young, emerging artists in such an important way, and I predict, as Professor Lee continues to teach, his enthusiasm and passion for art and teaching will continue to guide and influence students for years to come. As a former student, his influence on my work, philosophy and behavior as an artist and educator is unparalleled.
