Artist Lecture: Joo Lee Kang

Image source: www.jooleekang.blogspot.com

I was interested in Joo Lee Kang ‘s work because I thought it was really neat that the only thing she used in her art (at least the ones that are in the museum) is ballpoint pens. She started her presentation by telling her audience about her inspirations for the art that’s hanging up and how she began drawing in her certain style.

She conducts a lot of research for her drawings of animals because she wants them to be accurate, but she uses these studies to turn them in surrealist scenes that show the interaction between the creatures and the plants. She also likes to incorporate the human to have an interaction with the scenes, which is the reason she prints these images large so it feels like the scenes are life-size. I think it’s neat that even though she does practice drawings through researching her creatures, she still adds her own style by turning her creatures into characters in her art big drawings and sets them in different poses.

Joo Lee told us that she likes to draw with ballpoint pens because that’s the utensil she normally has on her. The ballpoint pen is also easy to transport so she can take it around anywhere she goes. She enjoys the “grayness” it holds which makes it easy for her to build up her value through more and more layers, as opposed to hard charcoal where adding layers isn’t as subtle. If it’s not a ballpoint pen that she has on her, she uses pencils or highlighters or really anything. I liked that she shared this with us because it gave us an insight into her personal preferences for how she works and she didn’t try to cover up that the ballpoint pen drawings was just something she did in her daily life and it worked out for the kinds of drawings she wanted to do.

One thing that I thought was interesting was when she said that she always needs to be at the gallery when they are installing for an exhibition of her work. She wants to be able to have a say in how people experience her work, and there is no set blue print that fits all museums. For example, the UNH MoA has a big window at the entrance so when people walk by, they have a straight-shot view of what’s going on at one specific part of the balcony wall. For this reason, she chose to hang up her 3-D installation of practice sketches so that it catches the viewers’ eyes as soon as they walk by the entrance.

After listening to her talk, I was a little disappointed to know that some of her pieces were scanned in and then printed larger because I was really intrigued at first at how someone can make a big pen drawing so perfectly with no mistakes. I also wished that the wallpaper was all hand-drawn even though I know it would have taken forever.