Test Plate 2, 2023

Cast iron, enamel, copper leaf

9 x 9 x 2 inches

Fair Market Value: $3,000

Starting Bid: $2,100

Buy It Now: $4,500

LEE EMMA RUNNING is an artist based in Omaha Nebraska who creates sweeping public installations on glass, as well as arresting objects using cast iron, enamel, glass, bone, and handmade paper. For the last 15 years, she has been using this work to engage audiences in conversations about the impact of human-built systems on the natural world.

She was a 2023 Foundry Resident in the Arts/Industry program at Kohler and a 2022/23 Artist in Residence with Opera Omaha. A permanent installation of her work will be built into Roskens Hall at the University of Nebraska Omaha in 2024. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Des Moines Art Center, National Taiwan University of the Arts, Form and Concept Gallery in Santa Fe, and PACE Gallery in Council Bluffs. She has been awarded residencies at Ucross, Jentel, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts and Agriculture.

Running is the recipient of a 2023 Populus fund grant from the Union for Contemporary Art in Omaha and was a 2017 Iowa Arts Council Fellow. Her work is represented by Olsen Larson Galleries.

These plates are cast directly from fabric and hand-carved wax. The enameled surface has been sanded back to the botanical reliefs and leafed with a thin layer of copper. These objects allude to scientific sample plates holding images of wild roses and deadly nightshade from the Nebraska State Herbarium.

Lee works with cast iron because of the connections of an element found in the body, industry, and land. Her work has historically combined unlikely metaphorical materials: Bone and gold, handmade paper and animal fur, bone and glass.

The materials of iron and powdered glass join each other seamlessly through heat. The enamel protects the iron, which is otherwise vulnerable to rust and decay. A fragile glass shell protecting a heavy, strong metal reminds us how different materials are fragile alone, but combine into strong structures. Much of the natural world follows a similar structural model of protection.