Jiyong Lee: Artist & Professor
Jiyong Lee is a Korean-American glass artist and professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, known for the Segmentation series—complex interior structures in solid glass, precisely segmented and reassembled. His work holds that we never see anything, or anyone, wholly: translucency as a material limit, sight always partial.
Lee received the gold medal of the Bayerischer Staatspreis (Bavarian State Prize, awarded by the State of Bavaria at the Internationale Handwerksmesse in Munich) for Orange Cylinder Segmentation in 2017, and his work Mitosis was named a finalist for the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize in 2021. His work is held in the collections of The Corning Museum of Glass, the Barry Art Museum, Chanel, and Samsung. In 2026 he presents new work in Homo Faber: An Island of Light in Venice, and opened the solo exhibition alike at Duane Reed Gallery.
Lee received the gold medal of the Bayerischer Staatspreis (Bavarian State Prize, awarded by the State of Bavaria at the Internationale Handwerksmesse in Munich) for Orange Cylinder Segmentation in 2017, and his work Mitosis was named a finalist for the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize in 2021. His work is held in the collections of The Corning Museum of Glass, the Barry Art Museum, Chanel, and Samsung. In 2026 he presents new work in Homo Faber: An Island of Light in Venice, and opened the solo exhibition alike at Duane Reed Gallery.
"More than most, his sculptures require the viewer's presence."
— William V. Ganis, "The Tao of Glass," Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly, no. 172 (Fall 2023): 27.
— William V. Ganis, "The Tao of Glass," Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly, no. 172 (Fall 2023): 27.













