SoulArt
For Lisa Lee, her artistic journey has been a road that continuously takes her back to her own center. “In my twenties, I began to
realize I had been living in very oppressive conditions. I had to heal
my way out and allow my inner voice to express itself.”
Lee grew up in Northern California. Lisa had a mother
who taught her practical, hands-on crafts and life skills while
simultaneously fostering a love of beauty and form. “My mother was
an RN. She volunteered with the Red Cross, and my grandmother
was on the front lines as a nurse during World War
One.” Lisa’s mother was a talented person who was
comfortable embroidering petit point or throwing
parties for 150 people. “I was her shadow,” says Lee.
“We went to arts and crafts shows everywhere in the
Bay Area. She showed me culture— Broadway plays,
Despite her positive influence, Lisa’s mother did
not support her daughter’s yearning to be an artist,
and it took nearly thirty years for her to realize her
dream. “She did not want me to end up a
starving artist,” Lee smiles.
Lisa began drawing at an early age. “I
experimented with every medium— pen and
pencil, watercolor, acrylics and finally oils
in college.” She discovered a love of three-dimensional art, and began to work with
ceramics, jewelry and metalwork. She studied
enameling, cloisonné, lost wax casting and
miniatures. “I loved the interplay of soft and
hard, the duality in nature,” she explains.
Though Lee never thought she would
assume her mother’s role, she became a
caregiver for ten years when her mother
suffered a stroke. Following her mother’s
death, Lee discovered a beautiful bottle in
her mother’s closet. “It was a Mexican liquor
bottle. I’d no idea what I was going to do
with it, but I was very drawn to its shape.”
Lee was subscribing to Oprah magazine at
that time. “I loved the magazine. The paper
itself was beautiful and the stories inspired
me.” She created a rainbow-like collage on
her mother’s bottle. Lisa’s first vessel was born.
Lee started to scour thrift stores and retail
outlets for bottles of every shape and size. She
70 PROFILE
and
continued to work with magazines to decorate her bottles, using bins
to organize colors and sizes of paper. She began to investigate various
ways to adhere the paper onto glass. “I discovered that my original
bottle had begun to yellow. I knew I needed better products.”
Her mother’s sense of practicality began to emerge. “I realized I
wanted to create vessels that were not only beautiful, but functional
and durable. I experimented with many materials. I was continually
searching for ways to coat and finish the bottles so that they would be
useful but still transparent.”
It took Lee over seven years to discover a combination of materials
and processes that would help her create unique, functional vessels
and her business— Mendocino Art ‘n Soul. “The final piece was
the discovery of handmade botanical papers from around the
world. Many of these papers are made using processes that go back
thousands of years, before written records.”
Today, Lee uses over thirty different archival-quality papers
which form the basis for the color and design of her vessels. Thai
mango, Japanese Unryu, or “cloud design” paper, Egyptian papyrus,
Lee regularly displays her work at both
the Willits and Ukiah Farmer’s Markets and
has other shows throughout the county. She
is grateful to have discovered a product that
allows her to live a simple life on her Willits
ridgetop. “My vision as a child was to be an
artist in Mendocino. I saw this area as the
Mecca for the artistic community.” Though
it took decades to accomplish, Lee would
not change a thing. “It has been an arduous
journey. Art has been my escape and my
revelation. I’m just the vessel from which the
divine can manifest.”
For more information, contact Lisa Lee at
(707) 459-3221.
