More than Flowers Bloom in Garden of Toil
Review, March 2000
By Sherry Cromwell-Lacy

Absorbed in the exact placing of thread, the lace maker of Vermeer's painting, holds our breath. Hers is a world of precision and focus, a still air broken only by deft fingers. Such is the hushed atmosphere within Celsius Smith Gallery conductive to concentration on, From the Garden, an exhibition of new works on paper by Ke-Sook Lee.

Personal iconography as translated inner dialogue can be evocatively informing, or it can be confusing, even obscure. Yet, it this not the desired rapport with which one might commune with the depths of the artist's persona. While Ke-Sook Lee's "garden" garden does not contain a John Malkovichian tunnel, it is a confrontation with an artist’s intimate throughts as portrayed by symbols and icons telling of a woman's (women's) history, aspiration and growth.

Marked by chores and duty, women live out the endless routine with one day to clean, the next for ironing, or sewing, on and on, whatever the task. An historic pattern universally known by women, often proudly proclaimed and embroidered upon the towels, cases and fabrics of domestic life. It is on this ground the Ke-Sook Lee embellishes Portrait of a Woman, a suite of seven works (a week a days) with vibrant and animated paintings of her daily image, a figure to refute the ordered obligation of prescribed life and ritual chore. The group concludes with an arranged cluster of crocheted doilies and pot holder, Referential objects that transform into floral-like orbs in many other works exhibited.

At first look, subtlety of color tone, and delicacy of line belie the power of Lee's vision. Hardly a bucolic field, each composition, whether of parts or singularly framed, is a stratum, fertile with conceptual images to represent moments of examination, phases of Change. Equally her use of various media, clay, ink, gesoo, glitter, polymer, thread, endow procedure and alteration in the stages of each layered work's realization.

The methodic stitching around these "journeys," "flowers," and "awakenings" contrive a regularity of thread mark, perhaps less a perimeter and more that of wise link between memory and potential in Awakening in Her Garden, and resilient seams for the past and future in Journey.

Gardens can be complicated places, confounded by undergrowth, aggression, frailty, just as nature can exude fragrance, strength, design and respite. The shapes and forms that emerge from Ke-Sook Lee's field are private and compelling, and effective balance for the viewer to contemplate.