Suzy Lee (Korean: 이수지; born February 9, 1974) is a Korean picture-book illustrator and author. She is critically acclaimed as an artist who explores the pleasures and tensions that lie between reality and fantasy. She is also known for her remarkable achievements in the field of wordless picture books, or silent books.[1] She gained global attention for her three works – Mirror (2003), Wave (2008), and Shadow (2010), known collectively as "The Border Trilogy" – using the center binding of the pages of a book as a means to create a narrative crossing the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Wave and Shadow were respectively named by The New York Times as Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2008 and 2010.[2]Wave was also awarded the gold medal for Original Art by the Society of Illustrators in 2008.[3] In 2016, Suzy Lee was shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award,[4] regarded as the Nobel Prize for children's literature, an award which she received in 2022.[5] Lee has received a number of other prestigious awards from around the world including the FNLIJ[6] Award Luís Jardim for the Best Book without Text in 2008 and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Excellence in Children's Literature in 2013.
Biography
Lee was born and raised in Seoul. She received a Bachelor of Fine arts in Painting from Seoul National University in 1996. She started out her professional career as an illustrator, but she soon became fascinated with picture books upon encountering the world of artists’ books. She decided to pursue graduate studies, receiving her Master's in Book Arts from Camberwell College of Arts in London, England in 2001. The following year, she published her first book, Alice in Wonderland, which was also her final graduation project.[7] Since then, she has published over thirty books.[8] Lee organized projects such as the leader of the artist collective, Vacance Project,[9] and illustrating Dream of Becoming Water, a book interpretation of a song by the same title by Korean singer-songwriter Lucid Fall.[10]
Career
Suzy Lee made her debut as a picture-book artist with Alice in Wonderland, which was the final project for her master's program. She participated in the Bologna Children's Book Fair with a dummy of the book and pitched it to publishers, eventually signing a deal with the Italian publishing house Corraini Edizioni in 2002. La Revanche des Lapins, for which she was selected for the Illustrator's Exhibition at the Bologna Children's Book Fair in 2002, was published in Switzerland the following year and recognized as one of "The Most Beautiful Swiss Books."[11] Lee gained attention in the picture-book world for the publication of the series of three books, Mirror (2003), Wave (2008), and Shadow (2010), complemented by The Border Trilogy, a manual to the series sharing the details of her creative process and approach to picture-books. Beginning with her solo exhibition highlighting "The Border Trilogy" at the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (MAMBo) in Italy,[12][13] Suzy Lee has been engaging with readers and audiences across the world through exhibitions and book fairs held in countries including the United States, Swenden, Germany, Brazil, Spain, China, Singapore, Japan, India, Mexico, Italy, France and Korea. In 2013, she illustrated the official poster for the Library of Congress National Book Festival.[14] Later in the same year, she was honored with the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Open This LittleBook.[15] In 2016, she was shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in recognition of the literary and aesthetic innovation qualities of her works. She received the award in 2022.[5]In 2019, she received the 60th Korean Publishing Culture Award[16] and selected for the IBBY Honour List for River,[17] a book inspired by a personal story of her dog.[18] She has founded Hintoki Press,[19] an independent publishing house, through which she has directly published experimental works such as Sim Cheong and The Magic Jar. She also leads the project group, Vacance.
Style
For Suzy Lee, the charm of picture-books lies in their power as a medium to convey the simplest truths in a simple yet refined manner. She uses a wide variety of materials from pen, pencil, charcoal, watercolor to acrylic, and different artistic practices including collage and print-making, depending on the book she is working on. She particularly enjoys using charcoal.[20] Suzy Lee's books often the relationship between fantasy and reality.[21]
2014 Please Touch Museum Annual Book Award, Philadelphia, U.S.A. – Open This Little Book
2014 Best Children's Books of the Year, Children's Book Committee at Bank Street College of Education, U.S.A. – Open This Little Book
2013 Picture Book Honor Winner, Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Excellence in Children's Literature, U.S.A.- Open This Little Book[22]
2010 Best Illustrated Album (Premio Album Ilustrado), El Gremio de Librerías de Madrid, Spain – Wave
2010 FNLIJ Award Luís Jardim – The Best Book without Text (Prêmio FNLIJ Luís Jardim – O Melhor Livro de Imagem), FNLIJ (Fundação Nacional do Livro Infantil e Juvenil), Brazil – Wave
2010 The Best Illustrated Children's Books, The New York Times, U.S.A. – Shadow
2008 The Best Illustrated Children's Books, The New York Times, U.S.A. – Wave
^Lee, Sungyup (2016). "Suzy Lee's Adventures in Picture book Land". Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature. 54 (4): 17–21. doi:10.1353/bkb.2016.0103. S2CID152013416.
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