In 1987, when Young-Jae Lee became the director of Keramische Werkstatt Margaretenhöhe, a ceramic workshop in Essen, Germany, its Bauhaus roots had mostly faded. Born in Seoul, where she was raised in a traditional Confucian and Buddhist household, Lee developed an appreciation for nature, motion, and time—qualities essential to ceramics, from the spinning of the wheel to the touch of the clay. Since taking over Keramische Werkstatt, Lee and her colleague Hildegard Eggemann have revived its Bauhaus legacy, blending ideals of accessibility and simplicity with the functionality of Korean design. Now 73, Lee experiments with light and shadow in her work, particularly through her signature spindle vases, with their defined shapes and sleek curves. “In many ways, her vessels serve as sources of enlightenment,” the Indian artist Tharini Sankarasubramanian wrote for Lee’s current show at David Nolan Gallery. “Lee doesn’t seek to create something ‘new’ but rather succeeds in seeing things in a new manner.” And oh, those colors. —Jeanne Malle

6. David Nolan Gallery Welcomes Young-Jae Lee Back for Exhibition Exploring Space, Motion, and Time Through Pottery

For the first time since 2004, David Nolan Gallery is exhibiting the work of Korean master potter Young-Jae Lee. The artist’s work is a reflection of her Eastern upbringing and Western skillset, as she was raised in a traditional Confucian and Buddhist family and began her ceramics journey in Seoul before emigrating to Germany. She eventually opened her own workshop near Heidelberg, and later took over as director of Keramische Werkstatt Margaretenhöhe in Essen, where she rekindled the Bauhaus legacy of classic, accessible design while adding a touch of the elegant and function forms of her native Korea. “Lee humbly refers to herself as a ‘potter’, though her vessels easily stand alongside other works of art in terms of their radiance, complexity, and sublimity,” says David Nolan. “They are highly aesthetic works of art that need no embellishment—they are profound in their simplicity.” Her aesthetically wondrous work has philosophical ties to the concept of space, motion, and time; the act of creating ceramics involves countless revolutions around a point representing passage of time, the shape is reliant on the hands of the potter, and the final creation inhabits a space of its own. The exhibition, “Young-Jae Lee: Forms from the Earth,” is on view through December.—A.S.

Though the 73-year-old Seoul-born artist Young-Jae Lee grew up surrounded by traditional Korean pottery, she didn’t appreciate the beauty of their unadorned, utilitarian shapes until, at 21, she emigrated to Germany, where she began her own journey as a potter. “If you’re standing in a dense forest, you can’t see the mountains — only the distance allows you to see the picture in its entirety,” says Lee, who has been the director of Keramische Werkstatt Margaretenhöhe, a Weimar-era ceramic workshop in Essen, since 1987. In “Forms From the Earth,” an upcoming retrospective at New York’s David Nolan Gallery, her now signature spinach bowls and spindle vases, to which she’s devoted the better part of her career, carry echoes of both the ancient art of dal-hang-ari (moon jars) and the form-meets-function legacy intrinsic to the 20th-century Bauhaus movement. With their subtle variations in contour and color, the deceptively simple yet technically complex geometric clay vessels stand as testaments to the infinite potential that can be found through the humble act of repetition. As she puts it, “My work is always a process, and an exhibition is not a conclusion but only a part of the whole.” “Forms From the Earth” will be on view from Nov. 1 through Dec. 21.