Lee Richmond’s passion is interpreting life through art. Her artistic work strives to make order out of chaos and extract meaning from our stages of the life cycle using personal, and symbolic references relating to our cultural history.

Her series Life as a House invents the spaces she dreams of — the houses, the rooms, the colors, the textures — and in this exploration of her mind at play she subtly reveals her unique view of life.

Inspired by the music in Athena’s Reich’s album, Little Girl Dreams, Lee revisits her childhood designs to create a tribute to the past, a view of the present, and a dream for the future using scraps of ephemera saved over the years.

Each room in Life as a House is constructed out of paper and patterns, layering travel drawings with tissue that once wrapped household items; cards and letters from friends are combined with paint chip samples for past homes. The result is a blending of colors, textures, and memories from poignant places in Lee’s past.

“We have the tools to remodel ourselves and embrace life’s unexpected turns,” Lee said. “Beginning with drawing, I juxtapose shape and pattern and create in layers. As I move through the process everything changes again; I see differently and begin adding, editing and layering until I feel myself at home.”

Through the creation of this new body of work, Lee aims to render the gap between dreams and reality.