Emily Lee believes language colonizes form and material. Working at the seam between knowing and feeling, Lee starts by dismantling the things around her--buildings, cars, books, cameras, Texas--into discrete parts. A selection of these constituent parts distill to become the inspiration for sculptures and installations that illuminate the phenomenological experience of the known.
Working improvisationally with a wide array of technical processes like welding, metal casting, ceramic pit firing, collecting, and image making, Lee sees form and material as primary sources of information to learn from rather than as means of expression. Lee makes site-specific, large-scale outdoor sculptures for public spaces, installations within gallery contexts, and discrete objects full of empty space. Lee is an artist, writer, and community organizer from the Texas Gulf Coast.
Lee has exhibited in Texas and New York, including the Fort Worth Modern (Fort Worth), the Visual Arts Center (Austin), Jonathan Hopson Gallery (Houston), Sweet Pass Sculpture Park (Dallas), Co-Lab Projects (Austin), and 5-50 Gallery (LIC, NY). She has been asked to speak on panels at The Contemporary (Austin), Gutterblood on the Wall (Austin) and for undergraduate courses at The University of Texas at Austin and Grand Valley State University. She founded a neighborhood DIY space called All the Sudden (ATS) which has supported and shared the work of 30 visual artists, 41 bands/soloists, 9 poets, 22 creative vendors, and 7 first-time creative workshop instructors, and many other groups. ATS has raised over $2,000 for mutual aid work benefitting the climate, reproductive justice, and local communities.
She can fabricate you something, too. Feel free to reach out about that.