Over the last two decades, Sung Soon Lee (BFA 1978, HON 2010) has been the leading innovator in the Korean textile art scene, expanding 2D textile work into 3D and installation. She has participated in more than 250 group exhibitions and held 17 solo exhibitions in Chicago, Seattle, Tokyo, Kyoto, and her home Seoul, South Korea. The artist has also won numerous awards, including two Korean Craft Council Awards in 1996 and 2000 and a Korean Woman Artist Award from the Korean Fine Arts Association in 2011.

Lee was born in Tokyo in 1943. She later moved to Seoul and received her BFA in 1965 and her MFA in 1967 from Ewha Woman’s University, where she is currently a Professor Emerita in the College of Arts and Design. A decade later, she obtained a second BFA from SAIC, which also honored her with an honorary doctorate in 2010.

In 2000 she returned to SAIC as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar, while also serving as the President of the Korean Fiber Arts Association. From 2009–12, Lee was the Director of the Seoul Olympic Museum of Art.

Throughout her distinguished career, Lee has merged the traditional with the contemporary—showing young artists how to explore time-honored cultural values in the context of today’s social issues. This is the very definition of Beautiful/Work.