Yun Gee Park Gallery & Atelier—South Korean artist Jeong Hwa Lee uses the medium of jewelry, with its associations to the body and socially prized objects, to explore humankind’s relationship with the earth and our allo-human neighbors. In her Mine series, Lee minifies strip mines to translucent and glowing ring-sized representations that rival the beauty of the gems that come from them. The rings are crimson red, to represent blood diamonds, or earth-toned, and they are often accented with mineral gold. She also further explores this theme through the creation of brooches that resemble the crystalline structures plucked from the walls and floor of a mine. For these brooches, she uses Japanese paper clay, with its association to earth, to fabricate objects of substantial visual weight that are meant to symbolize the replacement and healing of the scarred areas of the earth and a return in the mind of the wearer and viewer to a state of wholeness and remembrance. Lee’s desire is for her rings and brooches to find a place in jewelry boxes next to the precious products of the mining process, visualizing the home from which the gems and minerals were extracted and reminding one of the cost to the earth for their removal. Lee earned her BFA and MA from Hanyang University, and has exhibited her work in Asia, Europe, and North America.