Steven Young Lee

Steven Young Lee employs ceramics as a medium to explore ideas of cross-cultural appropriation and the way experiences, the environment, and even superstitions shape identity. The resident artist director at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana, Lee creates both functional works and sculptural art pieces that often take the form of broken or fractured and collapsed vases. His work is rich with allusions to the history of his medium, as in the series “Cup Panels,” in which the artist arranged 300 ceramic cups—decorated with motifs from various Asian and European traditions—into rows of shelves resembling Color Fields. “I see these as reminders of the past,” Lee has said, “but also as objects that I have become emotionally invested in discovering my own sense of place.”