On Wisconsin shines light on Helen Lee’s work merging glass and design


On Wisconsin spotlighted the work of UW–Madison faculty member Helen Lee in the Winter 2023 issue of the award-winning alumni magazine.

In Lee’s “Iroha” (2013), each glass piece is a character in an ancient Japanese poem. (Photo courtesy of Helen Lee)

The article, headlined “Blowpipe Prose,” explores how Lee’s work merges glass, language, and graphic design.

“One thing that has brought me great pleasure is finding shared vocabulary between glass and design thinking,” says Lee, who is the director of UW–Madison’s Glass Lab and holds the Helen Burish Faculty Fellowship with the School of Education’s Art Department.

“I’m interested in people’s relationship to language as a thing that exists in our brains, but also a thing that exists in the physical world,” Lee adds. “[Glass] suspends the work right on that cusp between the two, where the viewers really have to reconcile the work both as language and as object.”

Check out the full article to learn more about Lee’s work.

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