about

Tina Lee

I am a New York-based artist, educator, and brand strategist.

Quilts. Paintings. Words. Workshops. Curricula. Brands. These are not separate practices — they are different materials in service of the same question: What systems of support are possible and necessary for our communities to thrive?


On making

I think of composting as a regenerative metaphor for how I work: breaking things down to find what is still alive, and how they might grow again into something renewed that changes one's point of view. My practice is embodied, which means it is also spiritual and political.


On brand work

I partner with brands whose values center on collaboration and environmental sustainability — and who are genuinely interested in resisting default systems as an answer to questions of consumption, production, and profit. I am not interested in endless growth as a framework. I am interested in what becomes possible when you opt out of it.


On this website

I’ve designed this website myself using very limited coding skills. It’s a conscious choice. I prefer the voice of an awkward HTML line to a templated web page with sound graphic design. There’s nothing wrong with templates, but I’ve outgrown the shape of them.

In Laurel Schwulst's essay My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be? (quoted above) she imagines a website as a house, a cloud, or a garden — something alive, something yours. Not a storefront. Not a resume. Reading it, I felt the pressure of self-representation lift a little. What I want is always changing. I give myself permission to play.


(I prefer they/them pronouns — my birth name is Kristina)