Art and Seoul

Haejung Lee is a world traveler, but her three years in Baton Rouge mark the first time the 31-year-old artist has lived anywhere other than her native Korea for such an extended period. Like many of LSU’s international graduate students, Lee feels both a boost in confidence and a streak of insecurity as she learns the language, and alternating feelings of fitting in and standing out because of her ethnicity.

“There was pressure with understanding English, and I realized there was a wall between me and this country,” she says. Lee’s recent work uses this realization to illustrate just how Eastern and Western cultures inform her existence. So far, this honest approach has proven fruitful. Her piece Welcome, which comprises two life-size handcrafted wooden doors filled with rows of 600 cast-clay teacups, took top honors at the 2008 Art Melt in July. She was surprised, she says, by how many people wanted to take photos of it.

Just before graduating this spring, Lee married a Baton Rougean, Daniel Engle, which may keep her here for at least another year despite occasional longings to live and work in a huge city. She grew up in Seoul, after all.

While she and her husband look for a house, Lee is hunting for the right studio space. An artist like her needs plenty of room. Her work ranges from mélanges of colorful porcelain bowls to Seussian grids of plaster tubes and an electric suitcase that lights up a map of the world. While interpreting her compound experiences into art, she’s also beginning to discern cultural differences between her adopted home in Baton Rouge and other parts of the United States.

“I have a friend from Michigan, and people from up there get culture shock in Louisiana, too,” she says. “So I know it’s not just me.”

haejunglee.com