Pittsburgh-based artist
Bovey Lee utilizes her background in Chinese paper cutting to produce these beautiful and amazingly detailed two-dimensional works of precision on Chinese rice paper.
Bovey Lee has been painting, drawing and practicing calligraphy since the age of ten. Shortly after graduation, she came to the U.S to obtain her masters of fine arts degree in painting and drawing in 1995. At that time, graphics software and the internet were budding as potential creative media and outlets for artists, and she obtained a second MFA degree in digital arts. After practicing digital arts for years, she began to miss creating with her hands. In 2005, Lee created her first cut paper work.
“My creative process is three-fold – hand drawing, digital rendering, and hand cutting,” Bovey Lee explains. “Typically, I develop drawings before making a digital template on the computer. After completing the template, I print it out and use it as a positioning and visual guide. The template is largely photographic and I spend a lot of time translating continuous tones into patterns of solid and void. The final step is to spend lots of hours, hand cutting the image.”
“I define what I do as drawing with a knife. when I cut paper, it is a visceral reaction and natural response to my roots and affection for precision, detail, and subtlety,” she says.
