The Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority

"Layers of Dylan"

Marta Lee (who sometimes goes by the artist alias eMlee) is a freshman undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, working towards a Bachelor of Arts degree in printmaking or painting, and possibly a degree in English or Musicology as well. She was born in Moscow, Idaho, and grew up in Pullman, Washington (The Lentil Capital of the World) until age 10, when her family moved 2, 800 miles to Maryville, Tennessee. Because both of her parents are artists, she has always been immersed in the arts. After taking a printmaking class in high school, she became hooked on the techniques, especially that of reduction prints. In 2010, she won Best of Show in the Maryville High School Juried Art Show for her print "Thom". She also won a Silver Key award in the Scholastic Show for the same piece.

She has been in Maryville's Last Friday Artwalk several times. First, she showed with her mom, Vickie Kallies Lee. Last summer, she helped organize the Artistic Telephone collaboration project, which was also shown in the Loft during Last Friday and featured writing, art, and music by 12 different artists. She contributed her poetry, painting, photography and music. Also, her work is going to b efeatured in the upcoming Spring 2011 issues of the Phoenix, UT's literary art magazine. Five of her pieces are currently on display in UT's UC Concourse Gallery. Because of her obsession with music as well as writing, she often uses pictures of famous musicians or writers to base her work off of. Her style is very loose and whimsical, and her use of coor is bold. In the future, she hopes to further combine art and music, along with writing. This summer, she will be doing an internship that she received a grant for. In this project, she is going to create larger reduction print portraits of people wearing headphones. Each portrait will be accompanied by a letterpress piece inspired by a song.

To learn more about this artist or to purchase a piece of their work, contact the Arts & Culture Alliance of Greater Knoxville at (865) 523-7543 or www.knoxalliance.com.