Today we’d like to introduce you to David Michael Lee.
Hi David Michael, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in a creative environment, my father, a photographer, owned an ad agency and in addition to being an interesting person, he was resourceful and inventive. He often hauled the whole family out on weekends for these large art experiences, it was great. Other weekends we would go to his office and process film, print pictures, and play around with art stuff that was just lying around. There was always something interesting to look at or be inspired by at his office and at home for that matter.
It wasn’t until high school that I started to realize I had an interest in doing this art thing, more than just as something fun to do, but rather something I was truly interested in doing as a career. My senior year in high school was something special. Outside of first-period civics, my day went from two periods of Woodshop, off to an art class, and then to selling/making advertising for the school paper. I figured out that I had all the credits I needed to graduate, and I was planning on going to community college, so rather than taking on all the stresses of entry exams, I just got to be creative.
After my first year at Orange Coast College, I enrolled into a study abroad program for one semester in Florence. While it was great seeing all the artwork and architecture, I wasn’t necessarily focused on those aspects of creativity, I just liked the idea of being out there in the world experiencing these new adventures. My painting instructor, Tom Dowling, liked my work ethic and when we returned to Southern California, I started to work with him. A lot of the jobs were working in galleries, studios, and museums, but we also did landscaping, tiling, cabinet building, and demo work, just about anything. One of the many jobs we had was to help build out all the kitchen spaces at the newly developed Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana. I inquired what it would take for me to become a resident there, Tom said something like, the first step was you need to finish your undergrad work so that I could apply for graduate school.
Shortly after that experience, I decided to move to Chicago, and I enrolled at Columbia College. It was a wonderful experience, we had access to just about everything we needed to be creative there. In addition to making paintings, I also worked as a photo TA, a woodshop TA, and as a lab tech in the dark room… all of this gave me tremendous access. Collectively Chicago was a wonderful experience, but I knew all too well that I would not end up in that city, I really wanted to get back to Southern California. I was thrilled when I got the news that I was able to move into the Grand Central Art Center and begin my graduate work at Cal State University Fullerton.
The handful of years I spent at CSUF working on my MFA really got me interested in organizing exhibitions. The group of artists I worked with, including my now-wife, collaborated on projects that brought together different groups of people from the community. It was an interesting time to experiment with a variety of media and spaces throughout the region. Additionally, I was fortunate that because of my previous teaching experience, I was able to start running introductory studio art classes as a graduate student, and that really helped to build my résumé so that when my program was over, I was able to pick up teaching jobs at other colleges.
Many people may know this, but the life of an adjunct professor can be a bit difficult and unreliable. I spent quite a bit of time driving for the first 10 years of teaching. Outside of hopping around to multiple colleges, teaching from semester to semester, I did have a position as a staff member at Chapman University. I worked in their gallery as well as helping to oversee their permanent collection of art, which required me to work with the foundation office at the college. All these experiences compiled together prepared me for the position that I have now at Coastline College.
For the past ten years, I’ve been a full-time professor for Coastline College. I’m fortunate to have this position, even more fortunate that a portion of my workload is running the Art Gallery. It’s a wonderful space that has allowed me the opportunity to put on many exhibitions. I try to find a balance between curating shows and opening opportunities for the community to participate.
It has been a very interesting ride so far. Presently I live in Laguna Beach with my wife Julie, she is the Executive Director for the Laguna Art Museum. We have two wonderful kids working their way through elementary and middle school. Before Laguna, we spent five years in Avalon on Catalina Island, that was an interesting place to live. So close to, but far away from the business of Southern California. We spend a lot of time going up to Los Angeles or out to Palm Springs, going to Galleries and studios, keeping our fingers on the pulse of activities, and creating some amazing experiences for our kids who also get hauled all over the place in the name of Art.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I’d like to think that I’ve been very fortunate, that is not to say my pathway hasn’t had its ups and downs, high roads and low roads. There have been struggles, of course, but I can’t think of any hurdles that were not easy overcome with a little bit of sweat and creativity.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I have been actively painting for about 25 years and the one common thing that keeps coming into the mix would be color. Working with color is more of an obsession than anything, it’s how I see the world on a palette. In addition to that, form and space play a big role in my process. I usually start out a body of work with lots and lots of drawings, which make their way into many smaller paintings, which then transitions into multiple medium work, and then finally transition into a handful of larger paintings.
If there was some sort of impression the viewer could hold onto after looking at my work, it would be the visual experience of something uniquely different. Ideally, when one thinks about my paintings, these still forms suspended in space, I would hope for an embedded memory that is convinced of action and movement in three dimensions.
Here is my current Statement.
“David Michael Lee is as much focused on the process of creating an image as he is on the finished product, creating various states of tension through geometry and illusion, challenging any sense of the forces of nature performing properly. Everything from light source to gravity is manipulated for the sake of creating visual sensations meant to invoke a conversation between the painting and the viewer.”
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Anyone that’s interested in working in the arts should diversify what they do, not in their practice, but on their resume. A lot of artists can be over-focused on that big painting career. Most artists that I know all want that for themselves, and so do I, but at the same time, artists need to find ways to feed themselves and buy supplies. At the very least, when you are starting out looking for work, take anything, when you’re looking to show your art… show everywhere. The biggest things are to get connected to the community that you want to be part of and actively participate in that space. Be a person that gives back more than you take, be available and supportive of others, and get into that studio and make some work.
Contact Info:
- Website: davidplatinum.com davidmichaellee.com
- Instagram: davidmlee00
- Facebook: davidmichaellee
