Jacqueline Rush Lee is a Hawaii-based mixed-media sculptor from Northern Ireland recognized for her work with the book form. Drawn to the physicality of the book as familiar object, medium, and archetypal form, she transforms used books into art works that create new narratives. Remaining open to the physical and metaphorical transformations that occur in her working process, Lee’s residual sculptures or installations emerge as a palimpsest – a document that bears traces of the original text within its framework but possesses a new narrative as a visual document of another time. Conceptual fine craft aesthetics and ideas inform her works with an emphasis on materiality and meaning; specifically, the literacy of objects and embodied knowledge. Her work often employs external processes that she initiates by hand to create chance occurrences that aim to reveal the poetic or the confounding.
— “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, or one’s life experiences." These recurring or transient themes manifest themselves in art works that express ideas in veiled layers of meaning.—”