Aimee Lee

Aimee Lee is a papermaking artist and scholar who champions Korean papermaking in the English-speaking world and beyond (BA, Oberlin College; MFA Columbia College Chicago). Her Fulbright research on Korean paper led to her award-winning book, Hanji Unfurled, and her building of the first hanji studio in North America, located in Cleveland, Ohio. She exhibits regularly; venues include the Fuller Craft Museum, Islip Art Museum, Museum of Nebraska Art, Allen Memorial Art Museum, and the Korean Cultural Centers of the Korean Embassy in D.C. and Korean Consulate in NYC. Library collections include the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Stanford, UCLA, and Yale. Her work has appeared in The Korea Times, The New York Times, The Plain Dealer, KBS World Radio, PBS, VOA, and CNN's Great Big Story. She has taught and lectured at the American Museum of Natural History, Asian Art Museum, Caltech, Cleveland Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Detroit Institute of Arts, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Mills College, UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and Penland School of Crafts, among others. Her research has been funded by the American Folklore Society, Center for Craft, John Anson Kittredge Fund, Korea Fulbright Foundation, and the US Fulbright Program. Pre-pandemic, she traveled the world to teach and still serves her local community as an Ohio Arts Council Heritage Fellow, teaching papermaking and book arts at Oberlin College and the Cleveland Institute of Art. Following her Fulbright Senior Scholar grant to Korea in 2021 to study Korean papermaking tools, she will open a new hanji studio in South Euclid, Ohio to train further apprentices, exhibit hanji-related artwork, and pass on the intangible culture that she has learned from various national treasures.