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"Cliff Lee gave up the operating room for the potter's studio in the late '70s. Now he's nationally known for his works in porcelain." "He's carrying on the Chinese tradition of porcelain pottery and at the same time adding something new", says michael Monroe, former curator-in-charge at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery.
"He creates forms inspired by nature that are exquisite and beautifully symmetrical and embellishes them with extraordinary carving. All the while, he's taking advantage or the porcelain medium and what it has to offer - its thinness and translucency and pushing those qualities to the extreme."
"The magic of Lee's pottery comes not only from the fineness of the porcelain but also from the way it holds and disperses light. It is simultaneously earthy and airy. Enhancing the effect is the application of color through rich glazes. Through research, Lee learned how to reproduce a glaze called Imperial Yellow, whose secret had been lost for centuries. (In ancient China, potters who failed to render the glaze exactly were beheaded)."
"What really makes his work special are his amazing glazes," Wexler says. "Some of the colors he's developed are unique to him, and the effect is almost unreal.""Lee himself is an intriguing blend of contradictions and opposites - a scientist with an artist's soul, an artist with a scientist's thirst for knowledge and precision. As a brain surgeon, he was compelled to practice exactitude. He brings the same zeal for zero-defect performance to his art." "While other artists welcome the accidental in the creative process," Paul Dauer wrote in Ceramics Monthly, "Lee has struggled to achieve control and predictable outcomes." "After the piece has been fired for three days, he may open the kiln to discover that all that work is for naught. A potential masterpiece has been ruined by a tiny air bubble, a speck of dirt, a hairline crack, a small spot where the glaze didn't take."
"Every firing is a surprise," Lee says. From a quarter to a half of what he makes emerges from the oven imperfect. Lee does not traffic in seconds and rejects. He smashes them and buries them in a landfill. |
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 A Surgeon's Touch by Art Carey Excerpts from an article in The Philadelphia Enquirer. (contact us for reprint)
"What really makes his work special are his amazing glazes," Wexler says......(...view examples and learn more about "the glazes", by selecting from the navigation to the right)
"Every firing is a surprise," Lee says. From a quarter to a half of what he makes emerges from the oven imperfect. ...therefore "He smashes them and buries them in a landfill."
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