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Cultural-Lee
speaking
Generations exhibit at Ramsay
Museum showcases works of a
world-renown artist who
had a humble startLunar New Year happenings
By Burl Burlingame
Star-BulletinCLARENCE Lee, it seems, remembers the name of every art teacher who helped or inspired him. But it his father, a McCully butcher, who got him started.
"It was that paper, those pink, waxy sheets, the butcher paper he'd bring home," Lee recalled. It was World War II, and paper wasn't wasted on kids' drawings. Lee would spend his evenings drawing fighter planes and tanks and explosions and the usual things that enchant male children.
His mother, though, noticed, and enrolled him in a drawing class at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. "I think I was the only kid in McCully in an art class, so it was kind of embarrassing," said Lee. "But I discovered that art was something I really enjoyed doing."
So much so that Lee, one of the best-known graphic designers in the world, is one of several Chinese citizens in "Generations: Chinese Families in Hawaii 1852-2000," a new display at Ramsay Museum, in, naturally, Chinatown. The show is a panorama of the Chinese experience in the islands, and includes calligrapher Wah-Chan Thom as artist-in-residence.
Proud heritage
What: "Generations: Chinese Families in Hawaii 1852-2000," sponsored by the Ramsay Foundation and the Hawaii Heritage Center
Part of the show are Lee's designs for the Lunar Year stamps for the U.S. Post Office. But we'll get to that later. We left Clarence at the end of World War II with a hunger for art and not many ways to quench it.
"I went to Iolani and at that time they didn't offer art classes beyond 8th grade; it wasn't something considered important. But Mrs. Bird -- she was the art teacher -- she noticed my passion for it and she gave me a corner of her classroom to use until I graduated. Without her I might be a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer like the other Iolani graduates."
He managed to win a territorial scholarship in art and left for Pomona College in California. "There was an artist named Millard Sheets -- he designed the mosaic on the Rainbow Tower at the Hilton -- who painted watercolors for calendars. I thought that was what I wanted to do; go around the world painting watercolors for calendars. But I was never able to schedule a class with him, the other studies always happened at the wrong time."
He returned home after his freshman year in '54 to take a summer art class at the University of Hawaii. Taught by graphic whiz Josef Alberf, it turned out to be an eye-opener. "Just like he opened windows and doors for me," recalled Lee, still marveling nearly half a century later. Realist and abstract art was out; what became fascinating was the visual short-hand of graphic representational design; reducing complex ideas to easily understood symbology."He told me about a design school at Yale, and I got in. What a change! I started hanging out with hotshot kids from New York and the East Coast who were very competitive. I studied under Bradbury Thompson" -- who will figure later in this narrative -- "and after graduation began to get good jobs in New York, working for IBM and others."
By 1965, both Lee and his wife were homesick for Hawaii and returned.
"I started all over. I was scared but I opened a little office on Kapiolani Boulevard and began designing business cards for people. It was me and an answering service, back in the days when the answering service was a real person. As it turned out, it was the beginning of a boom period in Hawaii graphic design, and I've worked steadily ever since."
Lee's work is all over Honolulu and none of it is signed. For example, the safety sticker on your car was designed by Lee.
The only thing that has changed over the years has been the advent of the computer in the graphic-arts business. "We all used to know how to draw and paint; now you need to be a technician too," said Lee. "The good thing about the computer is speed, but you still need thought behind what you're doing. I worry about same-ness in computer-generated art. We're controlled and limited and seduced by the computer."
The bottom line is still pleasing the client.
"Young artists sometimes do a beautiful design that isn't practical, or doesn't serve the function it's needed for," said Lee. "The thing about graphic design is that it's not only pleasant to look at, it's also a tool."
One day Lee got a call from his Yale mentor Thompson, who was visiting Honolulu. "I took Bradbury and several of colleagues to lunch at the Willows, and we had a nice time. He said he remembered me because I was the only Asian studying art at Yale," chuckled Lee.Thompson's group, as it turned out, was the Stamp Advisory Commission for the U.S. Postal Service. In 1992, he got another call from Thompson -- "because, frankly, they were looking for an Asian artist" -- to submit designs for a Chinese lunar calendar image of a rooster.
Lee submitted several, engraved, watercolor, tempera, but a cut-paper image caught the Commission's fancy. Not only was it clean and bold and easy to print, cut-paper is a traditional Chinese art.
The Post Office issued the stamp in the early '90s and a funny thing happened; they sold a whole pile of them in China.
"Turns out there are like 20 million stamp collectors in China," said Lee. "You can't invest in the stock market in China, but you can invest in stamps. And every stamp that's sold to a collector is pure profit for the Post Office."
The Post Office quickly signed Lee for the whole series of 12 stamps. Although he is often called to autograph the tiny works of art at signings -- more pure profit for the post office -- Lee himself "gets paid in manapua and fresh fruit" at these signings.
The originals are about five by seven inches, and Lee designed in a variety of denominations going up to 40 cents. "We started out at 29 cents, and now they're 33 cents," said Lee. "Who knows knows what the price will be at the end of the series?"
The lunar stamp designs are part of the new show. "It involved eight families, all designing their part of the show, so it'll be like a Chinese fire drill," deadpanned Lee. "The whole point, though, is to honor our ancestors, those first brave souls who crossed the oceans to come here."
Ring in the lunar year
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