Sandy Lee (1995, California) is an interdisciplinary artist and designer who was born and raised in the East Side of San Jose, CA. Lee comes from an immigrant Chinese family and is a first-generation college student. She is currently located in the Bay Area and finished her undergraduate degrees at San Jose State University (SJSU) in May 2019, graduating with honors of Magna Cum Laude. Through-out her college career, she has learned to work with various mediums such as design, photography, jewelry and metalworking, paper art, wood-working, and ceramics. Through her curiosity of the range of art forms, it led her to strive for a double major in a BA for Design Studies and a BFA for Spatial Arts, as well as a minor in Photography. Lee primarily works with metal, graphic design, and photography after falling in love with the malleability of metal, the visual storytelling through clean and aesthetically-pleasing design, and captured moments and well-composed presentation through photography.

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At SJSU, Lee is also an active member and previously the Treasurer of the Jewelry & Small Metals Guild. Through the Guild, she participates in activities such as school and local art shows, off-campus art events and sales, and on campus tent sales. Her role as Treasurer has enhanced her leadership skills and broadened her connections within her local art community. Despite having graduated from SJSU, she continues to volunteer at the SJSU Jewelry & Small Metals Lab as a lab monitor. In addition to this site, Lee has an Etsy and a 20Twenty page for the sale of some of her works. Lee’s artworks have been exhibited in small local art exhibitions, such as at Works/San José, the SJSU student galleries, and Social Policy. Into the Depths is Lee’s first participation in a public museum show, which ran during the beginning of May 2019 at the MontereyMuseum of Art - La Mirada, and subsequently in the exhibition A Message in the Bottle by the same curator, Lance Fung, with her second rendition of the same piece; these two shows can be found on the Fung Collaboratives website.

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Lee chose to name her brand and creative outlet Red Swallow Creative because she hopes to connect her background with what she is doing. Red Swallow is a translation of her given Chinese name, 宏燕 (Hóng Yàn), which actually translates into English for “magnificent swallow.” In Chinese, the pinyin Hóng is a homonym for the color red. Lee believed for many years that her name had a meaning close to a “red bird” since she was never formally taught to read or write in Chinese, hence, the name of her brand and creative outlet. The name was given to her by her late grandmother on her father’s side, who was an instructor teaching the Chinese language back when she lived in Vietnam before her family immigrated to California, USA. Red Swallow reminds her of her culture and how it influences her art and personal life.

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Soon after graduating from SJSU, Lee started her design career with Western Digital Corporation as a full-time Graphic Designer that summer, and is currently designing various visual assets, including but not limited to packaging, promotional assets, campaigns, and branding. Lee still continues to develop creative content/art outside of Western Digital in her free-time.