Artist Bovey Lee's new career makes something old into something new

In the art community, it's often said that Pittsburgh is a perfect place to live, largely because of a relatively low cost of living and an open and accepting audience. But are there artists who are truly taking advantage of living here by expanding their careers beyond the city's borders on an international scale• Yes, there are.

One such artist, Bovey Lee, recently opened an exhibit of her works at the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's 709 Penn Gallery to give Pittsburghers a glimpse at what the rest of the world has been seeing from her during the past several years.

Lee, who specializes in cut-paper works, is something of an art-world darling at the moment. Her work is a staple at Asian art fairs in this country and abroad. And two months ago, it reached an even wider audience when more than a half-dozen of her pieces were featured on Huffingtonpost.com. Created in 2008, they are rather foretelling. They depict devastating tsunamis in cut paper, filled with flotsam -- everything from boats to buildings, from trash to treasure, jellyfish to people.

"I remember why I made this," Lee recalls, pointing to the piece "Tsunami-Enmeshed" in a catalog of her work. "It was after a big earthquake in China. Some of the images included are the victims of the earthquake. I put myself in it, as well, because we are all trying to survive and survival is a big theme in my work."

Paper cutting in China is as old as paper itself, which, of course, was invented in China thousands of years ago. "As a Chinese woman, I am always thinking how can I bring this medium to the forefront in the 21st century• How would it look different?" Lee says.

Those questions were made all the more relevant on a recent trip to Beijing, a city she last visited in 1988. "That was before all of this modernization and urbanization took place. Beijing was completely different in October when I saw it. And I thought, my work somewhat parallels that. You know, the way that I took ancient Chinese paper cutouts to the level of contemporary time, using relevant messages in my work, parallels what's going on right now. And that's what I want to do with my work."

Physical work

Next month, Lee will turn 42. She has spent the last decade living in the Pittsburgh area (currently Mt. Lebanon), and sees her show, "Paper Streets," as something of a celebration of that fact.

The exhibit at 709 Penn Gallery was two years in the planning, and took more than a half a year of solid work to produce the four massive paper-cut installation pieces on display. "This show was done in about seven months worth of cutting time, around-the-clock," Lee says.

Some of the pieces, like the show's namesake piece, "Paper Streets," are nearly twice as tall as the diminutive artist, who is just over 5 feet tall. "Physically, it is very demanding to cut a piece this big," Lee says of the 10-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide piece, hand-cut by Lee from a huge, folded sheet of white Tyvek, an industrial sheeting made by Dupont that is commonly used as a type of housewrap or water barrier in the construction industry. "When I cut it, I'm cutting it on a table. And I'm bending over as far as I can reach."

"Pittsburgh is famous for its paper streets," Lee says about staircases that dot the city's steep hillsides. Although they can be found on old maps, they are not streets, but bona fide thoroughfares that, long ago, were dubbed "paper streets." "So I put all the streets together and formed a sort of a mountain shape. It's a vertical-mirror piece, which means that when I cut it, I fold the paper in half, then cut them together and open it up. Symmetrical cutting is a typical way of working in Chinese paper cutting.

"I don't usually fold and cut. This is the first time that I fold and cut," Lee says. "Usually, my works are one piece, and I work from left to right."

She used the same technique for the three smokestacks contained in the large-scale installation piece "Smokestacks," located on the wall in the back of the gallery, which she painted blue. The piece, which fills the entire wall, depicts the familiar smokestacks at Homestead's Waterfront development billowing merchandise as a reference to what Lee calls Pittsburgh's "Cinderella story," in which the city has become a model of transformation from an industrial giant to a post-industrial city.

"In a way, it's not just typical of Pittsburgh, but in many cities that were known for manufacturing things, such as oil, steel and other things related to heavy industry," Lee says. But the piece, filled with everything from images of pizza and popcorn to purses and shoes, is a comment on consumerism. "We have turned into a nation of buying, spending and accumulating things.

Lee's media of choice is called rice paper, but it's a kind that actually is made from the bark of the Mulberry tree. Two of the large-scale installation pieces on display -- "Smokestacks" and "Falling Water" -- make use of that paper. But like the "Paper Streets" piece, her "Folding Chairs" installation, which is comprised of more than 600 tiny chairs glued to the windows of the gallery, is cut almost entirely from Tyvek, save for a few that hang on the door that were cut in sticky-back vinyl so they wouldn't blow away when visitors open the door.

"It's a challenge. But I really love the adventure in finding a new way to express myself through my work," Lee says of this new use of materials and large-scale way of working. "And I think installation is a very good, natural progression with my work in that regard."

To create her pieces, Lee takes pictures and makes a template from them. The template is only a guide. "When I cut, I cut on the fly. I don't map everything out. So, there's a lot of thinking involved," Lee says. "I just have a lot of fun cutting. I mean, beyond the meaning, creating them is very challenging."

"It's actually easier to cut patterns that are irregular," Lee says. "The chain-link fence (in 'Falling Water') has a repetitive pattern. So, if just one little element is incorrect, then the whole thing is just off. And people can spot it because we are so familiar with it."

Cutting with the past

Lee began cutting paper only a little over five years ago. When she moved to the United States from her native Hong Kong in 1993, she was pursuing a master of fine arts degree in painting from the University of California at Berkeley. After achieving that goal in 1995, she moved to New York City to pursue a master of fine arts degree in digital arts at Pratt Institute. She came to Pittsburgh in 2000 to teach graphic design and foundation design in the University of Pittsburgh's Studio Arts department.

"After doing quite a bit of digital art, I wouldn't say that my heart was in it," Lee says. "I found that I was more a fine artist, who really missed working with my hands. So, I was looking for something to work with in which I could incorporate my computer skills, my fine-art skills and suits my personality and strengths. I found paper cutting to be the medium for me."

That was in 2005, after a return visit to Hong Kong to visit her father, a retired interior designer. "He was a great influence on my life," Lee says. "Growing up, he loved to draw and paint, and I picked up on that.

"He was the first one to show me paper cuts from China when I was young. So, when I went back to visit him, I asked him to show me some of the paper cuts that he had shown me before. And I thought, maybe I can do something like this. They looked so beautiful, incredible."

Lee's first paper cuts were a series of pieces that featured gowns hanging on chain-link fences, which were displayed at Henry Au-yeung's Grotto Fine Art gallery in Hong Kong in 2006.

"It was very successful," Lee says. "People really loved those pieces. Especially in the Asian market, where it really speaks of the lifestyle in which everybody lives in apartments in tall, skyscraper-like buildings. We don't have dryers, so if you want to dry a blanket, or something too large to hang in your apartment, you go down and hang it on a chain-link fence.

"It's not about laundry. It's more about a way of life, nostalgia," Lee says. "My childhood memories (are of) growing up in an apartment building like that."

So well received were Lee's works that Au-yeung decided to give her a solo show in 2007. "It did well. I sold about 90 percent of the work," Lee says. "And that's when I thought, maybe I can turn this into a professional career and devote myself to it full-time."

Lee says that despite the economic collapse of 2008, she has been able to sell her work. And that's saying a lot, considering her larger pieces sell for around $35,000, with the smallest going for $3,600. "I think having the Asian market at that time really help me springboard my professional career," she says.

Lee understands that those prices might be beyond the budget of the average Pittsburgher, but she is very happy to be living and working here -- and now exhibiting her artwork here. "I want to make sure that I'm very much a part of the Pittsburgh art scene," she says. An art scene that, she says, "has many advantages."

"I can experiment here," she says. "A commercial gallery wouldn't want to devote all of this space for me to do big installations that may or may not sell."

As for the future, Lee has big plans. Much of the work on display at 709 Penn Gallery will go on to another venue after the show closes on May 22.

"I'm taking Pittsburgh to Japan," she says. "Most of these works will go to Japan in July for a show titled 'Kirie of the World.' It is the first cut-paper show in Japan featuring international artists. "Kirie" in Japanese means "cut-paper art." The group exhibition is at Fujikawa Kirie Art Museum. It is a new museum entirely dedicated to exhibit cut-paper art. The show opens on July 9 and runs through Sept. 25. There are eight artists, including me, in the show."

Later in the year, Lee's work will be featured in another solo show at Grotto in Hong Kong. Then, in 2012, another solo show is planned for the Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco, the latest gallery to sign on the artist.

Additional Information:

'Bovey Lee: Paper Streets'

When: Through May 22 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesdays-Thursdays; 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sundays

Admission: Free

Where: 709 Penn Gallery, 709 Penn Ave., Downtown

Details: 412-456-6666 or pgharts.org