Jim Lee is an artist – a painter to be exact, as he feels that he’d rather reserve the title of “artist” to the Leonardo DaVinci’s of the world. A native of Berrien Springs, Mich., where there are more cows than people, Lee knew that once he graduated high school, he needed to set out for New York. “I love my hometown,” he said, “but I just didn’t want to be sitting there wondering what could have been.”
His Brooklyn art studio is filled with canvases on the wall, paint on the floor, lo-fi rock 'n' roll in the background and incomplete pieces sprawled about the room. It is the perfect environment for him to create, the artist said.
“I keep a terrible studio…crap is everywhere. I have about 24 things that I am working on all at once,” Lee said. “Everything is in flux…things tend to be fluid in my studio…it is best when I don’t realize that I am making anything. The stereo is on…the TV is on…The lights are bright, and it smells of oil and spray enamels.”
Lee has a way of connecting with his students and making the time to truly see them improve rather than moving from student to student. He will stay late, come early, do whatever he has to in order to see his students achieve.
“He taught me to just rethink everything I know about art and he’s showed me so many skills,” said Jacob Ferrandi, a junior industrial design major. “I’m just really grateful for him and to have him as a professor for the last three years.”
Lee does not just help inside the walls of Calkins Hall, but is someone who is willing to go out of his way to help students appreciate art.
“My favorite memory with Lee is when he took time out of his schedule to meet me and my friends at a museum and he walked us around and just talked to us and gave a real good lesson about all the artwork that was there,” said Joe Colangelo, a senior fine arts major.
He does not just teach students to create art, but focuses more on the process of it, making sure that his students know more than just paintbrushes and gesso.
“Currently him and I are working on a collaboration project,” said Amanda Lastella, a junior fine arts painting and psychology major. “At first it completely spiraled out of control, as most things do when we’re working on projects to begin with. That’s what makes him so different. That’s what makes you develop ideas and reach your goal in a way that you never thought you would before.”
“We wound up coming up with a project that I don’t think we would have otherwise if we hadn’t gone through that whole process,” Lastella said.
And just like any good professor, Lee did it for a reason.
“Process is everything,” Lee said. “I always tell my students, I don’t care what you paint, I only care how you paint.”
C L E A R S K Y
On April 28, Lee opened a gallery in Brooklyn with his friend/fellow artist Tommy White. The gallery called C L E A R S K Y is less of an actual gallery and more of an announcement box screwed into the side of a building.
“We are going really big time with the artist that we are exhibiting,” Lee said. “The first show is ‘Green Go Home,’ an ongoing collaborative project between internationally recognized artists Rirkrit Tiravanija and Tomas Vu.”
Part myth and part folklore, “Green Go Home” is both a misunderstanding and an invention. According to Tiravanija and Vu, the exhibition is “meant to be a wall of resisters, and of resistance.”
Lee and White are taking big strides with this exhibit creating a space that still feels like a gallery, street art and a call-to-action.
“Green Go Home” is on display until June 6 before Lee and White’s next installation is going to try to top this one.