Jacqueline Rush Lee is a Hawai’i based Artist from Northern Ireland who creates conceptual objects and sites that re-contextualize materials, narrative and history. Her artworks have been featured in various international publications and she has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Jacqueline has worked extensively and innovatively with the Book form as her primary medium in addition to other mixed-media objects and installations. While recognized for her work with the book form, recent work increasingly explores other media. During the Pandemic she renovated her studio and returned to her early love of ceramics. As founder and Artist-in-Residence at ‘Ohe Kiln House, HI, Jacqueline also creates one-of-a-kind studio art pottery and ceramic sculpture and is working on a body of work to be exhibited in the future.
Jacqueline holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction in Ceramics and a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Hawaii. Her background in Irish Culture, coupled with extensive travel and a studio practice in a remote island location situated between East and West, contribute to a unique world view that has shaped her thinking and making. She is the recipient of awards and residencies that have supported and illuminated her studio practice. Rush Lee has been in residence at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside, CA, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Amherst, VA, the Hambidge Center, Rabun Gap, GA, and Penland School of Craft, Spruce Pines, NC.
As a Visiting Artist and Lecturer she has presented her work at Academic institutions nationally and internationally. Highlight exhibitions include the Yale Art Gallery (CT), the Fuller Craft Museum, MA, The Hole, (NYC), the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, (CA), Jaus Gallery, (LA) Center for Book Arts, NYC, Hui No’Eau Visual Arts Center (HI) and the Contemporary Museum (HI). She recently exhibited a solo exhibition of her work Whorl at East Hawai’i Cultural Center, HI. Her work is in private and public collections that include the Allan Chasanoff Book Art Collection, Yale Art Gallery (CT), the Honolulu Museum of Art (HI), and the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Art in Public Places (HI).
— “Intuitively chosen, the objects, materials or sites that I select suggest layered metaphors of knowledge and corporeality as an embodiment of the transitory nature of the body, thoughts, memories, life experiences." These recurring or transient themes manifest in art works that express ideas in veiled layers of meaning.—”
