Joan Lee: Ephemera
By Fred Camper
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Especially fascinating are the works that pair the drawing on the left with the monoprint on the right. Though these are mirror images, they can look quite different–it’s even hard to tell at times which is the original, because plant fragments have come off on some prints. The drawn half of A Deprived Dusk has an irregular mass of black ink in its lower portion punctuated by a line of milkweed seedpods; above them are an isolated large pansy and a “bouquet” of pansies–a motif that recurs often, as if Lee were offering us things she’s collected. But the grouping is closer to random flowers in a field than perfectly arranged flowers in a vase. And as in most of the paired drawings, Lee covers this surface with a thin sheet of translucent paper, which not only holds the specimens in place but distances the viewer from them.
Like vanitas paintings, Lee’s works contemplate both nature and nature’s impermanence. The title of another diptych, On the Event Horizon, refers to the limitation of the “event horizon,” the “surface” around a black hole beyond which no light can escape–and the traces of dandelions and pink berries here are almost obscured on both sides of the diptych by a gray wash. There is a cluster at bottom center, but it registers more as part of an integrated field, a mix of berries, flowers, and ground–an object and its indistinct traces, light and light lost.
Es ist kalt draussen… is a tall freestanding box covered in nearly transparent fabric; inside is a waist-high object resembling a video-game controller complete with joystick. A break in the fabric sports a panel of nonfunctional dials. The title, which means “it’s cold outside,” combined with the fabric cage suggests the way humans wall themselves off from the “outside” world to lead artificial lives; the enshrined joystick suggests our culture’s new sacred icon.
