About

Aimee Lee is an artist who makes paper, writes, and advocates for Korean papermaking practices (BA, Oberlin College; MFA, Columbia College Chicago). Her initial Fulbright research helped her build the first hanji studio in North America and write her award-winning book, Hanji Unfurled. This research also inspired her second book about tool and equipment makers vital to the survival of hand papermaking, As Good as Our Tools; both books were published by The Legacy Press.

She exhibits and is collected internationally; her work has shown at the Cleveland Museum of Art, 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 Abu Dhabi (UAE) and Korean Consulate in NYC. Library collections that hold her work include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Harvard, Oxford, Rijksmuseum, Smithsonian, Stanford, UCLA, and Yale.

She travels the world to teach, is an inaugural Midwest Culture Bearer Awardee, and serves her regional community as an Ohio Arts Council Heritage Fellow, teaching papermaking and book arts at Oberlin College during their Winter Term. Funders include the US Fulbright Program, Korea Fulbright Foundation, John Anson Kittredge Fund, American Folklore Society, Arts Midwest, Assembly for the Arts, Center for Craft, Center for Cultural Innovation, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Ohio Arts Council, Puffin Foundation, and SPACES.

Her second Fulbright award as a senior scholar focused on further research of Korean papermaking tools, and continued her training since 2009 with various national and provincial Intangible Cultural Property Holders. She trains the next generation of papermakers in the Korean tradition from the Korean diaspora and beyond in her private hanji studio east of Cleveland and in workshops around the world.