decade of what has become.

The decade of my twenties was filled with art school, marriage, work and kids.  The ten years that make up my twenties where each year drastically differs from the next was one big mashup of all things that I have become.  I always thought I'd be in my twenties forever, but we all know that it only lasts 10 years.

During that time, I had quit my job twice at the same company.  I never saw myself permanently fixed to one place and found it quite boring.  The first time I had quit was in 2006.  My mother had become a little sick, but now I think of it, it wasn't big enough to really impact my decision.  Maybe it was just an excuse but I left my first real world job and decided to become a full-time writer slash artist.


My days were spent like so:

I would wake up as my girlfriend went to her job.  I sat in front of the typewriter and begin brainstorming and doing writing exercises.  

Later I would sit in front of the computer and work on some videos.  

I would leave for Kim's Video on St. Mark's Street and rent 3 dvds.  I would come home and watch one of the three films and burn a copy of the other two to watch at a later day.  

After watching the movie, I would sit behind the typewriter again and try to finish 10 pages of a screenplay that I was working on.  I figured that writing 10 pages a day, I would eventually have a solid script in about one month.  



Days were a lot longer then.  I wasn't confined to a set schedule nor did I have to accommodate anyone else's time.  It was just me and my writing.

I ended up writing 3 screenplays but nothing ever materialized from it.  I had made some videos that would get played somewhere but nowhere big.  I started my website www.botheman.com which I still keep updated but by the end of that year, I was back at the job I had left.  I was married and needed a steady form of income.

I've never enjoyed that much solitude since and once in a while, I think back at that year.  Its something that I would unlikely see anytime soon; time just for me and no one else.  No obligations but the ones that I made for myself.  A bit selfish but I think we all need to be at one point or another.

The culmination of the 10 years rolled straight into my 30's.  I sit here a bit puzzled at where the time went but I can only smile at the results.  Just today I pretended to be a girl named Lisa, playing make believe with my six year old daughter.  I would never trade that in for anything, not even a years worth of watching movies, chain smoking and typing stories on my typewriter.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the paint.

I had started painting around this time two years ago.  I did it because it got dark really early, and I was going bored out of my mind.  I had picked up sewing couple weeks prior but after 2 misshapen pillows, I withdrew my plans of being the next Betsy Ross.  

I've been a video artist since 2005.  I say 2005 because that's when I had my first show.  It was in a gallery in Helsinki called 00130gallery, a group show with many other artists and a show I couldn't attend because of the distance; but regardless my first show and the start of my video art career.  

I had never painted before other than my freshman year at Pratt.  I vaguely remember telling one of my professors that I didn't need to paint or draw because I was a filmmaker, and in filmmaking, we use cameras. 

I painted and painted and soon I had about 10 paintings that I was somewhat satisfied with.  My friend owned a coffee shop so I asked him if I can have a show and with 50 dollars or so, printed a poster and made some DIY pamphlets.  I invited some people from the neighborhood and some friends and we had ourselves an opening.

I knew I wasn't an established painter and I knew the quality of my work wasn't the best so I had priced each work relatively affordably.  The total of 10 paintings would equal $1000 and by the end of the night, the show had sold out.  

I had become a proud artist with a sold out show.  Knowing that it was mostly people that I knew who bought my work because it was cheap, I didn't take my painting career too seriously, but maybe that was the point.  Maybe because I didn't take it seriously, I was able to show it without feeling shy or worried that someone would criticize too badly.  

Maybe that was the issue with my career as a video artist, because I had cared for it too much, and walled myself from criticism and comment; I didn't fully put myself out there.  

After ten years, I had finally learned how to approach my video work.  Its just ironic that it was because I started painting.  

 photos from ilovevideo.tumblr.com

I've always been interested in the studio spaces of other artists.  Its where ideas are brought to life and lately, I've been wanting to develop my own studio.  I've for the most part of my artistic life, made video art work that dealt with collaging of found footage.  But more recently, I've been shooting a lot more and because of my developing painting and drawing work, I'm feeling quite cramped in my current situation.

Paul Klein and information absorbtion.

I have been on a binge to be constructive and looking for useful material anywhere possible.  Youtube seems like a great place to start so I type "artistic process" in the search.  The first video is of Ryan Mcginness and his creative process.  The video soon ends and automatically starts a video called "Tracey Emin: What Artists do all day."  Interesting, so I watch both parts 1 and 2.  Then a suggested video pops up on the side.  "Paul Klein on how to succeed as an artist." Never really keen on self-help and the likes but what harm could it do.  Best 40mins spent.  And I got around to follow one of his advice which was to write an artist statement, but to remember that you can write a new artist statement the next month, the next day or the next minute if you want to.  The artist statement can be an on-going process, but just write one.  And so I did, and here I will share it...

(please remember that this is the first draft, very rough and haven't been checked over...I am also very self-conscious, thank you)

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ARTIST STATEMENT:

Bo Lee, is a visual artist with an emphasis in video.  

I have always wanted to make movies.  I thought I was going to become a hollywood director and be commercially successful by 28.  I was always attracted to the story and felt that I had plenty of stories to tell.  I went to art school and continued my path to becoming a film director.  I worked as an editor for commercials and films but soon quit to write a screenplay.  During this time, I had made a bunch of films and had them up on a website.  I began to receive calls about showing my work.  But they were never from film festivals or people interested in narrative work but from galleries and curators.  In a sense, my work always belonged to the video art world.  I’ve always wanted to make feature length films but I guess I was better at making abstract, short, films that sometimes looped and sometimes didn’t.  In 2006, I began to take my video art more seriously.  I saw myself drifting from the narrative structure and experimenting more with visual aesthetics and form.  

My studio work was side-tracked a bit by marriage, children and needing to make rent and soon found myself in South Korea.  In Korea, I had found a renewed sense in my work and began developing my skills.  Painting, wood-working, welding and began playing with different materials and resources.  I had a furniture business that allowed me to develop my social and salesmanship skills which in turn helped me become a more balanced artist in terms of knowing how to market the work that I was creating and realizing that making artwork was only a small portion of the artist that I wanted to become.  I began to make paintings, drawings, sculptures but ultimately, thinks all of that is a way to develop my video work.  

I think in terms of space and time and story is still important to me.  When I paint or draw, I try to develop my other senses.  I try to block out the time aspect because its no longer relevant in painting.  I think more in terms of composition, techniques and movement.  I’m more attracted to shapes and forms.  I may or may not want to make a statement but in video, I almost always want to say something.  I’ve always trained myself to think that way, so that the videos serve a purpose outside of just plain visuals.  My paintings and drawings are a bit different.  Maybe because I’ve only been utilizing the canvas for a lot less of a period, but I’m more stable when I begin to work with a painting.  I’m more at peace and allow myself to act differently.  And its because of this contradiction almost that intrigues me about me.  I think we inherently have contradictions that we try to justify or change but never acknowledge those contradictions and allow it to just be.  I can’t sell my videos nor do I want to.  I would rather play them for free and hope that someone will see it and get some sort of reaction out of them.  My paintings, drawings and sculptures I want to make money from.  I want to be accepted in the art market.  I want to be part of its culture and draw inspiration from them.  

In five years, I want to have sold enough paintings and artwork to be able to call myself a professional.  I want to have several shows, group or solo and some fair exposure.  I want to be able to do this to allow freedom for my videos to be shown.  

In ten years, I want to be able to make or already have made a feature length film.

I want to think in terms of projects, themes and exhibition ideas.  I want to see my body of work, complimenting each other.  Everything is in sync.  The timing and rhythm.