Gallery • 4 Photos

Lee Visser can take almost anything and turn it into a beautiful piece of art. One glance at the doodles on her notes, or sometimes even her hands and arms, and you can tell this senior is overflowing with creativity.

Not limiting herself to any singular medium, Lee works in painting, ink, pencil drawings, felting, and more, often combining materials in collage-style pieces. Recently, she has been creating digital drawings via Procreate, and then translating these pieces into physical works.

The multi-time Scholastic Award winner says that she is “inspired by everything around [her], but particularly people and their perspectives regarding the world surrounding them,” and notes that both “everyone in [her] life” and music play particularly large roles in the direction of her artwork. Lee’s photography of family and friends encapsulates the strong connection and influence people have on her. In regards to music, she sometimes hones in on a lyric and runs with it, while other times choosing to pair a whole song with a piece.

Currently, she is working on a new painting modeled after a digital drawing. She describes how it is modeled after a show called “It’s Okay to Not be Okay (Psycho But It’s Okay)” and that the “motif of a butterfly haunting the main character, her past memories sticking to her like glue and becoming part of her character” spoke to her, again showing how anything can become a source of creativity.

Currently, Lee is taking AP Drawing, Photography III, and Ceramics, “loading up the semester” as she called it. She has previously obtained credits at the College for Creative Studies and is even certified in basic graphic design, “just for fun!” Her goal is to attend the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, and to eventually become a high school art teacher.