About: Artist Lee Malerich

MA/Fiber-Fabrics, Northern Illinois University, 1981

BFA/Fiber-Fabrics, Northern Illinois University, 1979

The work of Lee Malerich is emotionally composed. Inner tensions take the form of different figures in the compositions; herding, flipping and otherwise superimposing upon one another, just as a variety of ideas and attitudes exist within one personality. Bodies are almost never presented in full figure, as ideas are not rigid and complete things. Using incomplete bodies as a design element creates an unsettling effect upon the viewer - our essential symmetry is an almost proverbial notion, and when it is distorted, we notice.

Female figures often carry an inventory of scars similar to those from surgeries she has had - from C-sections to biopsies to major invasions. This information is included in her work to bring these assaults to the surface, acknowledge them, and dispense with them. Making the work is a therapeutic process, which enables her to more easily integrate her recent experiences with surgery and chemotherapy.

The images are constructed by first composing the picture plane, using bits of miscellaneous fabrics pulled together to pose a color problem. The symbols are drawn on paper, a copy is made, and the line drawing transferred to the fabric. Then the two parts of the composition are united by color and value choice of the symbols into one working image. The symbols must be different enough from the fabrics on which they rest to be seen, but not so different in tone that the composition is not unified. Each piece is signed, dated, and numbered as to it sequence in production that year.

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