Jimin Lee is a Korean-born Bay Area artist currently teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute. She studied etching at the rigorous Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music, and the skills and technique that she acquired there are evident in the agility with which she produces her images. In what is usually only a picture plane in which images occur, Lee manages to draw the viewer’s attention to the material surface of the paper. She accomplishes this by combining photoetching, etching, drypoint and aquataint and through her unorthodox tendency to use numerous plates for each etching. As a result the image becomes thick with inks: opaque inks are overlaid with others more translucent, some shine and others bleed into the paper, each describes a different material adding to the complexity of the image represented.
Lee is interested in everyday inanimate objects which become, through her attention, infused with emotion and human reference. Lee explains: I choose common useful objects, such as shoes, a bag, toothbrush, bathtub and pillow which have constant contact with my body. They are not just bare ‘things' which are specific utilitarian objects, but metaphorical interpretations of… human relationships. The objects wear the evidence of their ware. Where stains appear, materials break down, and pipes become viscerally disconnected, the objects become anthropomorphic.
Jimin Lee has taught at California State University, Hayward and San Francisco State University, as well as the San Francisco Art Institute.
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