Johnson State College Receives Bronze Sculpture: "The Meditators"
Gift of Korean-born Artist Won Lee (MFA JSC '06): Creating Cross-Cultural Connections on JSC's Campus
"To me, a sculpture is an event. Making a sculpture is a chain of events. Every stage of completing a piece is an encounter, prelinguistic, ungrounded, non-representational, immanent encounter." - Won Lee, December 2006
Johnson State College welcomes the artwork of Won Lee to its campus. A reception and ceremony for this artwork are scheduled for Thursday, September 27, from 4 to 5 p.m. President Barbara E. Murphy has accepted this gift on behalf of the college and welcomes all members of the community to attend the reception to be held in Dewey Campus Center, main seating area .
Born in Korea and trained in the U.S. and Canada, Lee is an artist who merges several different cultures. Additionally, he continues to cross-pollinate cultures by traveling to Mexico, China, and Europe to explore different cultures and work in different foundries for their various casting capabilities.
After a conversation with Won Lee, it is clear that his spirit and enthusiasm for the arts are his life blood. Assisted by his wife, Huan Jiu, Lee teaches classes and sustains his artistic work. Various expressive qualities emerge in his work and the figure is always central. Human life takes on other-worldly, non-literal elements. Through his hands, flesh and blood become sculpture - deeply natural, stable as granite or bronze, gentle, emotional, soothing yet joyous in the face of ever-changing events.
This gift to the college was created from clay in 2006 while Lee was working in China. The original piece was 28 inches high. At the foundry where he was working in Beijing the piece was enlarged to two meters and cast in bronze. A global traveler based in Toronto, Won Lee decided to attend the Master of Fine Arts graduate program at Johnson State College for its international exchange possibilities through the Vermont Studio Center, its flexibility as a low-residency program, and its standards for quality and individualized attention. It was in December, 2006, during Won Lee's thesis exhibition of more than a dozen bronze pieces that he decided to offer the campus one of his latest works.
"The Meditators" reflects the calm stillness of two figures sitting in quiet reverence for their environment. In his own words, Won Lee suggests that viewers "Feel the air while the sculpture figures meditate -- viewing the serene mountain view." In this way he suggests that all audiences simultaneously observe their own body, their own environment, and their own gifts as they reflect on these sculptures. As a bronze, the textures and details of this piece have been cast and installed in several locations. JSC is the most recent of them.
For more information please contact Leila Bander at 802-635-1469 or Leila.Bandar@jsc.edu