* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Bovey Lee was born in Hong Kong and moved to the United States in 1993. She works with and combines a wide range of media, including drawing, painting, digital media, and most recently paper cutting. Since 2005, Bovey’s paper cutout drawings seek to preserve, promote, and extend an ancient Chinese folk art through invention by adding personal and contemporary elements that have not been used in the traditional craft before.
Bovey’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Asian American Arts Center, NY; Kennedy Museum of American Art, Athens, Ohio; University of California at Santa Barbara, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Beijing, China; Fukuoka Museum of Art, Fukuoka, Japan; and others. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Hong Kong Museum of Art and in private collection. Bovey’s work is represented by Grotto Fine Arts Gallery in Hong Kong.
In 2007, Bovey is a recipient of the Vira I. Heinz Endowment Fellowship. The Fellowship supports her 2008 artist residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is also a nominee of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and was honored as a Mid Career Artist of the Asian American Arts Center in New York. Her educational background includes a BA in fine arts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a MFA in painting from the University of California at Berkeley, and a second MFA in digital arts from Pratt Institute in New York.
"I first saw Bovey’s work when we were in a show together at Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco. There were many amazing artists working in paper, but Bovey’s work really struck me. Besides the fact that the work is cut out of paper, I don’t really care that the works are cut by hand or that they are cut out of paper, her composition and line work is astounding. I really enjoy the way she uses space in her composition as well. One narrative bleeds into the next and there is little regard for traditional spatial hierarchy."
"Bovey Lee is an incredible paper artist. Her labor intensive, meticulously hand cut paper worlds are truly masterful and a wonder in all their glorious minuscule detail. After pouring over her website, I am also floored by how prolific she is as I can only imagine how long each work must take (and how hard it is on her hands). Her work is an exploration of mankind's complicated action of seeking nature for solace and respite while simultaneously over-developing land and minimizing the space for nature. This aspect of her work also really resonates with me."
