Lee Ko is a multidisciplinary artist based in Charlotte, North Carolina, whose work explores memory, transformation, and collective human experience through sculpture and material-based installations.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Ko earned her BFA and MFA degrees before moving to the United States, where she completed a second MFA at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. Living and working across Eastern and Western cultural contexts has shaped not only her artistic language but also the way she understands people, place, and making.

Lee Ko works across metal, clay, wood, textiles, everyday objects, and found materials. Rather than defining her practice by a single medium or function, she allows each idea to determine its own material path. Repetition, physical labor, and movement are central to her process, through which form gradually emerges over time, guided by touch, rhythm, and persistence.

At the heart of her work is a careful collection of quiet stories carried by ordinary things. She is drawn to small, easily overlooked elements and the everyday experiences embedded within them. Recent and ongoing bodies of work, including Uncounted Butterflies, the 100 Eggs series, and the 100 Houses series, draw from daily life, memory, and lived experience, allowing personal narratives to expand into shared visual forms.

When working with everyday or found materials, Lee never presents them in their original or recognizable state. Through sustained labor, materials are dismantled, refined, and brought as close as possible to their essential nature before being integrated into her work. Stripped of their former identities, they reappear in a more elemental form, fully absorbed into the visual language of the piece rather than standing apart as references to prior use.

Her work approaches transformation and renewal not as abstract ideas, but as lived, physical processes. Surfaces shaped through hammering, assembling, and layering retain traces of effort and rhythm, allowing a sense of movement to remain within quiet, resolved forms. Materials that have already lived a life are reintroduced not as symbols of reuse, but as carriers of time, memory, and human presence, reshaped through care and intention.

Lee’s practice often extends beyond the studio into collaborative and community-based projects. Through long-term initiatives such as The Hands Project and her nonprofit work with Hands On Well, she creates spaces where art becomes a shared experience shaped by many hands and voices. These projects reflect her belief that art is both a personal act and a collective experience rooted in relationships, care, and connection. Rather than the power of a single, fully resolved form, she is drawn to the collective resonance that emerges when small, seemingly fragile elements accumulate and intertwine.

Her community-based projects expand her sculptural practice beyond object-making, positioning participation, care, and collective memory as central materials within her work.

Lee is based in the Charlotte, North Carolina area and maintains her practice from her home studio. She lives with her husband and four children, sustaining a practice closely connected to daily life and long-term engagement.

Lee Ko is the founder of Hands On Well and creator of The Hands Project, an ongoing collaborative public art initiative based in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. Her work has been presented in galleries, public spaces, and community institutions across North Carolina and beyond.

Her work continues to examine how personal memory and collective experience may be held, transformed, and carried through material form.