Wood
Work between modern art and design
Jae-Hyo Lee, natural wood sculptures
South Korean artist Jae-Hyo Lee is a master of manipulation in his beautiful art. He turns discarded pieces of wood into attention-grabbing works of art that are elegant and functional.
These incredibly sleek and beautiful sculptures are the result of Jae-Hyo Lee’s meticulous work: having assembled various chunks of wood, he burns and then carefully polishes them to create visual contrast in his sculpture art.
See
“I want to express the wood’s natural characteristics without adding my intentions,” says Lee. “I like to make the most out of the material’s inherent feeling. Little things add up to transmit a stronger power, greater energy. That is why I have quite a lot of large pieces among my wood artworks.”-Jae-Hyo Lee
Art directly from trees might make you feel a bit more grounded!
Bryan Nash Gill creates prints from the cross sections of trees.
Wood From the Hood
Since 2008, Wood From the Hood has been dedicated to the sustainable practice of removing urban trees from the waste stream and turning them into unique home goods and custom furniture. Each piece in the collection removes an average of 220 LBs of CO2e from the atmosphere and 250 LBs of discarded lumber from the waste stream.
Say
Which of the pieces above do you prefer?
How does looking at wood make you feel?
Do you have a favorite type of wood? How does it look, and feel?
Can something utilitarian be considered art? Why?
Do
Read “Wood is Good for our Health,” which discusses how incorporating wood and other natural materials into our buildings can reduce stress and contribute to good mental health.
Make your own tree stump print.
Draw a tree stump. Meditating on the concentric rings brings a break from the day. Incorporate mindfulness and achieve a satisfying result, too!
About the Artist Jae-Hyo Lee
Jae-Hyo Lee (b. 1965, Hapchen, South Korea) graduated in 1992 with a BFA from the Hong-Ik University in Seoul. Combining distinct traces of Land Art, Arte Povera, and Minimalism, Lee’s works cast a questioning eye over the roots of form, its function, and its role within the natural world.
Work between modern art and design
Lee’s works willfully play with the oft-contested boundaries between modern art and design, referencing the idealist’s cubes, cylinders, and cones as perversions of the chaise longue, the coffee table, the lampshade, and even the humble doughnut.
The beauty of art as a product of labor
Revealing a subtly humorous and unsentimental attitude to nature, what unites these works is a belief that the beauty of art is a product of the labor from whence it comes, whether this is the meticulous carving of larch trunks into the form of a perfect sphere or, equally, the precise bending and sanding of thousands of nails hammered one after another into a hunk of cut lumber.
WATCH Jaehyo Lee’s process below.
Follow Jae-Hyo Lee on Instagram, Jae Hyo Lee
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