About Kacie:
Based in New York, Kacie Lees is an interdisciplinary artist working in printmaking, Neon, and video; as a professor of art and technology studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, her practice blurs studio experimentation with instructional design. Kacie’s focus is on what she calls “polychromatic smears” — holograms, oil slicks, rainbows, aurora — and “the poetic power of optics to gain immersive insight into the dynamics of working with light as a tactile medium.”
“I want L.A.'s sun and colors to permeate a new body of Neon work in reference to an ongoing study of light and effect,” Kacie says of her intentions at Sentral DTLA. “I habitually make small, repeated forms in Neon and display them en masse. The forms become an imperfect pattern across a wall — some large, some small, some off-center, some upside down — all with an individual presence and fervor.”
Photo courtesy of MIke Zorbas.
During her residency, Kacie will also teach experimental bending and color courses at the Museum of Neon Art, in Glendale, create and distribute a "Neon manifesto," and contribute writing to an upcoming handbook on holography.
Kacie will live and work at Sentral DTLA from February until April 2022, engaging with residents and the larger L.A. arts community. She will produce a custom piece of Neon to display at Sentral DTLA and add to Sentral’s private art collection, which also includes a growing number of onsite murals at Sentral properties by illustration artist Chris DeLorenzo.
The public is invited to watch Kacie working in her pop-up studio on the ground floor of Sentral DTLA at 755 S. Spring Street. Walk past during the week and you could catch a glimpse of Kacie bending glass over fire. Additionally, some of her most recent works will be aglow from the windows — we invite you to come take a peek!
