Jacqueline Rush Lee, Killinchy: The NI artist transforming books into artwork in Oahu, Hawaii

Jacqueline Rush Lee was born in Castlereagh, attended Dundonald Girls’ High School, and grew up in Balloo, Killinchy. Now she lives in what she describes as “another green isle, far, far away”.

Having taken up residence on the tropical shores of Hawaii during the 1990s, the artist and sculptor says elements of her Northern Irish background and heritage still find a way of popping up in her unusual work.

“If you had asked me when I was younger where I’d end up, I never would have thought it would be Hawaii,” she says, speaking from her home in Oahu.

“My path to making art has been unconventional.”

Jacqueline works primarily with repurposed books to construct sculptures by stacking, sewing and shaping pages in unusual forms.

The 59-year-old says she always wanted to travel and was fascinated by the US, particularly the Grand Canyon.

“I then ended up travelling to Bermuda, where I met my husband and we got married there,” she explained.

“He’s from New York and his family on his father’s side were from Hawaii, so that’s how we ended up here.”

Jacqueline defines herself as a mixed-media artist, but her work has always focused on books. Her latest solo exhibition ‘Whorl’ ran from April 5 to May 31 in Hilo, Hawaii.

Turning books into artwork is a complex, lengthy process.

“All of the book sculptures in Whorl have been transformed by nature,” she explains. “I create the initial book structures, place them in old tree wells or book branches, and leave them for anything from one to four years to be transformed.

“I then display the residual objects after freezing them to get rid of any bugs.”

Jacqueline added: “The whole symbolism of a book is that you’re transported in your mind, just by reading the text.

“For me, I like using the book to engage the viewer visually, as opposed to using text.”

Jacqueline says a lot of the books she collects are second-hand.

“One book that I did artwork with, a Japanese owner had taped it lovingly together. And in the way it was taped, it looked like a spine,” she said.

“I pick up on these different things and go with the energy of the book to transform it.

“It’s like a material philosophy; I think about things through making.

“The intuitive investigations that I have — I usually sort of research further to try and understand why certain forms of materials pop up in my work.

“The books for me investigate the unknown and the confounding. The way a book has a topic and the author creates a story; I like creating these books that speak on another level, where we are actually dealing with confounding things that we don’t really understand.”

Jacqueline’s process includes ‘firing’ books in kilns to change them completely — a different method from just burning them.

She believes that over time, some themes and inspirations from Northern Ireland have also appeared in her work.

“Growing up there, it’s just something that’s always in your heart.

“There’s a feeling to the island of Ireland because it’s so old and ancient. I have found that living in Hawaii, there are visual similarities to the geographic landscape.

“Because I’m closer to Asia, I visit Japan a lot and have a real connection to it, which seems so strange to anybody knowing that I have an Irish background.”

Jacqueline has also started working with gold leafing — a Japanese technique that uses gold leaf to recompose the fragments of broken objects.

“The gold leaf also references the gold leafing found in devotional books in my collection and notably the iconic Book of Kells and the shrines and temples I visited in Kyoto, Japan,” she continued.

“There’s always something from our personal experiences and cultures that find a way to come out.”