Thu 8/27 @ 5-7PM
Northeast Ohio-based artist Aimee Lee has built herself an international career as a papermaking/paper-based artist, influenced by her Korean heritage. She was born in New York to immigrant parents, and became fascinated with the idea of transforming paper into art. She went back to her ancestral land to study its traditional hanji, a durable papermaking process using mulberry bark. When she came back, she devoted herself to utilizing and sharing the processes she learned to make garments meant for display, printing and dyeing the paper with natural materials before transforming the paper — including scraps from previous projects — into finished garments. Several were included in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s 2024 show Korean Couture: Generations of Revolution. She has just been named as a 2026 Cleveland Arts Prize winner.
The Kent State University Museum just opened a solo exhibition of her work titled Aimee Lee: Every Last Scrap, featuring her hanji garments. This week a free, public reception will be held at the gallery on Thursday August 27, with a talk by curator Sara Hume, remarks from the artist and the opportunity to meet her. RSVP HERE.
“Aimee’s work demonstrates that paper is far more than a surface for drawing or writing,” says Hume in the show’s press release. “While she creates work in the form of clothing, she is not bound by the dimensions of the human form. Her works are in a range of sizes that allow her to make use of resulting remnants.”
“Papermaking was a revelation to me, because I could use any number of plants and rags to transform cellulose into paper, and paper into art,” Lee shared in that press release. “Hanji became a way to connect to my heritage, and to other far-flung members of the Korean diaspora. Once I learned that the virtue of sewing in Korea was to use every last scrap, I understood my innate desire to save and stitch together an entire world from years of papermaking, dyeing, printing and bark manipulation. Each bit holds a story, and together the ensuing garments build new narratives for our ever-evolving world.”
The show will be on view through May 24, 2027.