Susie J. Lee: Of Breath and Rain

The Frye Art Museum presents the first solo museum exhibition by leading Seattle artist Susie J. Lee. A 2010 Stranger Genius Award winner, Lee is a new-media sensualist who filters, quiets, and distills technological noise in her work, creating spaces for viewers to experience intensely intimate encounters with her art. Of Breath and Rain comprises two of Lee’s signature works, Rain Shower, 2007, and Still Lives: Exposure, 2010, both of which utilize a range of time-based media to explore the extraordinary richness of our human existence.

Lee’s early training as a pianist led to an awareness of and a fascination with the capacities of the human hand. Intending to become a hand surgeon, Lee was accepted to medical school but declined the invitation after deciding medicine was not her calling. Drawn to clay as the material closest to the malleable and transformative qualities of the human body, she enrolled instead as a graduate student in ceramics at the University of Washington.

Lee initially created tiny ceramic sculptures and works that highlighted clay’s temporal qualities. She has retained an abiding love for the tactility, sensuality, and immediacy of working with clay, even while finding closer alignment with video, digital technologies, and performance for the expression of her ideas.

Both Rain Shower and Still Lives reflect Lee’s deep awareness of the temporality of life, human fragility, and the corporeal experience of our actuality. Although she left behind her aspirations to become a surgeon, Lee has an ongoing interest in the medical sciences that informs all her work, which has at its core, an inquiry into what makes us human.

Lee has been named an “Artist to Watch” by the national publication Artnews. Her art has been exhibited nationally and internationally at Artefiere Bologna (Bologna, Italy); the Blanton Museum of Art (Austin); the Denver Art Museum; Galleria Tiziana Di Caro (Salerno, Italy); and Gallery Hyundai (Seoul). In 2011 the Portland Art Museum selected her as a recipient of its Northwest Contemporary Art Award. The Tacoma Art Museum’s 10th Northwest Biennial, running concurrently with this solo exhibition, also features Lee’s work, including additional selections from her Still Lives series.