Monday’s Muse: Jennie Jieun Lee

After years of experience inside the fashion industry, Jennie Jieun Lee encountered a desire for change. A distant yet happy memory of a ceramics class she attended with her mother in the ’70s resurfaced, motivating Lee to redirect her energy towards clay.

Freelancing as a casting agent once on a project for a major department store, Lee watched as models “put on these smiles, and I knew some of them were not very happy. This one kid, I could hear him breathing through the smile. He was trying so hard and it was like he was stuck in this purgatory.” This witnessed moment inspired Jennie Jieun Lee to start creating a series of ceramic masks, a physical representation of what she describes as “the strange faces we need to present in life as adults.”

Unexpected, imperfect, humorous and sometimes unsettling, her ceramic works are confident in colour, shape, theme and stroke. Having just collaborated with one of my favourite fashion designers Rachel Comey on a ‘Glazemoods’ print for her Prefall 2015 collection, Jennie’s ceramic work has my attention for her exceptional use of colour and intuitive rapport with abstract shape and composition.

My new obsession: [Jennie Jieun Lee]