While the Columbus Arts Council regularly brings important art to the attention of the city residents, some exhibitions carry more weight than others.
Throughout the month of November, the arts council is hosting an exhibition of work by the late painter Susan E. Lee, a Korean artist who passed away on Oct. 6 at the age of 93 due to stomach cancer that spread to her liver.
“It had always been a dream of hers to be able to share her passion with her Mississippi family and her friends,” Helen Campassi, Lee’s daughter, said at an opening reception at the Rosenzweig Arts Center on Thursday night. “Because she lived in Mississippi for 16 years and always felt that Mississippi was her second home.”
At the reception, Campassi said her mother was living in Korea when she passed, but her family spent many years living in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, after immigrating in 1970. At that time, Campassi’s mother changed her name from her Korean name, Lim Seongsoon, to her American name, Susan E. Lee.
Lee stayed in the United States until Campassi and her siblings were adults. Campassi married her husband, Robin Campassi and moved to Columbus.
In 1986, Lee moved back to Korea to be with other members of her family, Campassi said. Once she arrived, Lee started taking art lessons, painting for the first time in her life in her 50s.
“I never realized she was artistic,” Campassi said. “She was a poet, actually. … When she was living in Mississippi, she … wrote a lot of poetry but she never painted. And then when she moved back to Korea, just as a hobby, she started taking art lessons because there was an art studio right below where she was living.”
Upon her return to her home country, Lee started studying with renowned painter, Cho Eunsook. Campassi said that over time, her mother’s hobby evolved into her passion. She won the 24th Korea Modern Art Festival’s Special Award in 2003 and the 25th Korean Modern Art Festival’s Achievement Award in 2004.
Campassi said Lee was known for her serene and reflective work which often focused on an idealistic version of nature, including sights from Korea, but also some featuring native Mississippi flora.
In 2021, Campassi started working on moving more of her mother’s artwork to the United States, with the hopes of putting together an exhibition of displaying her pieces at the arts council. Plans were in the works to hold the exhibition before Campassi’s mother passed.
“In November 2021, I had them shipped from Korea to Savannah, Georgia,” Campassi said. “Then there was a truck from Savannah to Atlanta, and then Atlanta to here. It took them six months, and it got here in April 2022.”
But in June, Lee was diagnosed with cancer. Campassi said she rushed over to Korea, where she spent every day with her mother for the next four months until she passed away.
While Campassi was away, her husband, along with Columbus Arts Council Executive Director Salem Gibson, worked to put together the exhibition of Lee’s work. Gibson said he personally hung all of the pieces currently displayed at the arts center, as a way to connect with Lee’s work and to display her passion publicly.
“This can be very monumental for them as a family,” Gibson said. “This could be a really good opportunity for them to grieve properly and deal with the loss in their own way. Plus, it makes it more real— The art more real. It makes it to where now, something that she did with passion and love can be shown to our community where her daughter and son-in-law live.”
Campassi said her mother would have been honored to see her work displayed in Columbus.
“She would be so proud and she would be very humbled,” Campassi said.
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