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Ceramist Hoon Lee conducts free workshop

Sept. 12, 2005

KALAMAZOO--Korean ceramist and performance artist Hoon Lee will spend the final two weeks of September leading a ceramics workshop in the Knollwood Art Annex of the School of Art at Western Michigan University.

The workshop is Monday through Friday, Sept. 19-23 and 26-30, with daily sessions from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m.

On Wednesday, Sept. 21, Lee will give a slide lecture on his work at 7 p.m. in Room 2302 of Sangren Hall. He will give a performance titled, "De; Functionized/Dis; Functionalized," Thursday, Sept. 29, at 6 p.m. in Knollwood Art Annex.

The public is invited to all events during Lee's residency free of charge, and there is easy access for the handicapped.

Lee is assistant professor of ceramics and art and design at Grand Valley State University. His work primarily focuses on performance, installation and ceramics. In the workshop, he will be working with ceramics students on a project that will culminate in an installation and performance there. This is a new piece that he is preparing specifically for the WMU School of Art.

His earliest memories of clay, Lee says, are from a time "when I was sitting on the ground picking at it and putting it into my mouth. It was the taste of dirt." Other memories will be a part of the performance. He says that the story becomes "the creation of a very small moment of contact, the moment of definition between one state of being and another state of being, between myself and others."

Lee received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Seoul National University of Technology and an M.F.A. degree from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. Working with performance-based installations for the past few years, his solo exhibits have included the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska; Fosdick Nelson Gallery at Alfred University; Gallery Jo, Seoul; Tashkent International Museum, Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Tokoname Port, Tokoname, Japan; and Gallery Yoon and Hurr's Gallery, Seoul.

Lee's visit is sponsored by the School of Art and the Martin Luther King, Jr.-Cesar Chavez-Rosa Parks Visiting Professors Program. For additional information, contact the School of Art Exhibitions Office at (269) 387-2455.

Media contact: Jackie Ruttinger, (269) 387-2455, jacquelyn.ruttinger@wmich.edu

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