Artist Statement

There’s this gardener who has the amazing ability of knowing exactly how many bags of mulch he needs for a job just by looking. Every time. He’s the best. One day, he looks at a yard he’s working on and is like ‘18 bags.’ So he goes to the store, buys 18 bags of mulch and and goes to work. When he’s finished, the flower beds are amazing- beautiful lilies, roses, orchids, but there’s a problem. He still has one bag of mulch left. He can’t believe it. This has NEVER happened before. This extra bag of mulch drives him crazy. He is THE guy that always gets the perfect number of mulch. He’s like “OH NO.” So on his drive back home, he takes the extra bag of mulch over the side of the highway.

Jongho Lee makes works and often doesn’t really know why. He paints, draws, sculpts, blows glass, finds things and tries to fix them or finds things and breaks them. Most times, he likes to make work and finds the questions during making more intriguing than the solution reached in a product. He hopes to make more things.

Wanna hear another joke? There’s this couple who just started dating and things are going really well. One day, the girl finds a box of old love letters from her high school boyfriend. She reads them and loves how silly they are- the drama of young romance. So on a whim, she sends the love letters to her ex boyfriend thinking he might find them funny too. So at night, she tells her current boyfriend about it, and he loses his shit. The get in a huge fight, and he’s all “Why would you send your love letters to your ex boyfriend? He’s going to think youre still in love with you. And she’s just like “Relax, Brandon,” and the night is now ruined. Brandon is like “That ex is going to come back for you, he knows where you live!” So after dinner, he drives her home. She lives in one those big apartment buildings by the freeway. And he walks her to her door, but he forgets to lock the car AND leaves the windows down. He kisses her goodnight, but things are kind of weird, you know? Then he gets back in his car and starts to drive away but when he glances in his rearview mirror, his blood turns cold. Guess what’s in his back seat? The bag of mulch.

(Joke from Bojack Horseman S2E4)

Bio

Jongho Lee (b. 1996) was born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in Old Tappan, New Jersey. In May, 2018, he will receive a Bachelor in Fine Arts from New York University.