Biography
Jon Lee is a Korean-born American printmaker, papermaker and educator who has held the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, since 2004. He came to the United States from South Korea with a substantial pre-academic record as a working printer — approximately eight years of professional printing experience split between Korea and the United States — and his subsequent training set him on the rare double track of master-printer certification and academic-MFA work. He completed the Tamarind Master Printer Certification at the Tamarind Institute of Lithography at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, the principal North American training programme for lithographic master printers and one of the most demanding certifications in the field, before going on to earn his MFA in Printmaking and a Graduate Certificate in Book Studies / Book Arts and Technologies at the University of Iowa, whose Center for the Book is one of the senior North American programmes in handmade paper and book arts. At Trinity he teaches printmaking, papermaking and book arts. His engagement with Japanese water-based woodblock printing — the practice that brought his work into the catalogue here — is rooted in a long fascination with the tools and materials of the medium rather than only its image-making protocols. He has studied baren-making under the senior Japanese craftsman Gotō Hidehiko and has himself become a maker of barens, brushes and Japanese papers as part of his studio practice. The print included in the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference juried international exhibition — nb2201, a 43.2 by 30.5 centimetre woodcut — was selected for the IMC2024 catalogue alongside his other documented activity at the 2021 Sumi-Fusion conference in Nara, where a tribute exhibit of his life's work was presented. His prints are held by the San Antonio Museum of Art, which acquired two faculty artworks in February 2022, and his exhibition record extends across South Korea and the United States. His commitment to the tool-and-material side of the medium — what one podcast interview titled go back to what's most basic — places him in the small group of senior craftsperson-printmakers in the contemporary mokuhanga revival who treat the construction of baren and brush as continuous with the conception of the print, and his Tamarind-plus-Iowa-plus-Japan training arc is one of the more unusual in the field.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇺🇸United States
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Jon Lee is a Korean-born American printmaker, papermaker and educator who has held the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, since 2004. He came to the United States from South Korea with a substantial pre-academic record as a working printer — approximately eight years of professional printing experience split between Korea and the United States — and his subsequent training set him on the rare double track of master-printer certification and academic-MFA work. He completed the Tamarind Master Printer Certification at the Tamarind Institute of Lithography at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, the principal North American training programme for lithographic master printers and one of the most demanding certifications in the field, before going on to earn his MFA in Printmaking and a Graduate Certificate in Book Studies / Book Arts and Technologies at the University of Iowa, whose Center for the Book is one of the senior North American programmes in handmade paper and book arts. At Trinity he teaches printmaking, papermaking and book arts. His engagement with Japanese water-based woodblock printing — the practice that brought his work into the catalogue here — is rooted in a long fascination with the tools and materials of the medium rather than only its image-making protocols. He has studied baren-making under the senior Japanese craftsman Gotō Hidehiko and has himself become a maker of barens, brushes and Japanese papers as part of his studio practice. The print included in the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference juried international exhibition — nb2201, a 43.2 by 30.5 centimetre woodcut — was selected for the IMC2024 catalogue alongside his other documented activity at the 2021 Sumi-Fusion conference in Nara, where a tribute exhibit of his life's work was presented. His prints are held by the San Antonio Museum of Art, which acquired two faculty artworks in February 2022, and his exhibition record extends across South Korea and the United States. His commitment to the tool-and-material side of the medium — what one podcast interview titled go back to what's most basic — places him in the small group of senior craftsperson-printmakers in the contemporary mokuhanga revival who treat the construction of baren and brush as continuous with the conception of the print, and his Tamarind-plus-Iowa-plus-Japan training arc is one of the more unusual in the field.
Jon Lee's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.
Jon Lee is a contemporary printmaker working in the mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock) tradition. Their work contributes to the living tradition of Japanese woodblock printing. Prices for contemporary mokuhanga prints range from $100 for smaller works to $1,500 for major compositions. Most prints sell in the $180–$600 range. The global mokuhanga community has been growing, with increasing exhibition opportunities and collector interest. Contemporary mokuhanga represents an affordable entry point for collectors.