Photograph by Michael Lou Bradley.
The Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts is sacred ground for American ceramics: a nexus for creative energy in the discipline since it was the proving ground for Peter Voulkos and Rudy Autio in the 1950s. Currently, the place is in exceptionally good hands: those of Steven Young Lee. Somewhat like the glass artist Jeff Zimmerman, Lee has cultivated an aesthetic of imminent collapse—though his works could also be read the other way around, as if they were rising into being. History is conspicuously present in his work: Lee’s fragmentary forms evoke archaeological digs, and he frequently quotes ancient East Asian shapes and decoration in his work.
Yet his pieces also speak vividly to contemporary experience, not least his own, as the American son of Korean immigrants. “I am often situated between cultures looking from one side into another,” he says. “My work allows me to reinterpret and confront questions of place and belonging.”¹ Lee’s deconstructivist pots bear witness to the fact that identity is not simply inherited, but must be built, despite the inevitable fractures and shifts that occur along the way.
Korean American Artifact in porcelain, cobalt and copper slip, and glaze. Designed and made by Steven Young Lee, USA, 2020.
14” L x 13” W x 6” H
35.6cm L x 33cm W x 15.2cm H
SC803