Lee Musgrave
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Aug 12
- 5 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Lee Musgrave works with discarded ephemera, collecting everyday scraps found during walks and arranging them into layered compositions. Using sheets of glass, he photographs these materials without digital editing, letting light, chance, and intuition shape the final image. His process is hands-on and reflective, often revealing unexpected detail and balance in the smallest items. Works like "Skittle Daddle" and "Entwined" show how light can shift perception and bring subtle forms to life. His images quietly explore beauty, waste, and the tension between surface and depth.
Q: What makes discarded ephemera so compelling for you as a starting point? What do these materials offer that others don't?
A: Saving the planet and its multitude of environments and lifeforms is the paramount goal of us all… or it should be… so when I am out and about walking in the forest or a city and come upon a candy-bar wrapper, a popsicle stick, or any other form of trash, I pick it up. When I arrive home and empty my pockets, I set those objects on my studio work table and study them. Some of them speak to me instantly, while others require longer to contemplate, and a few go directly into the trash bin.
Admittedly, these items are most often hand size or smaller. It’s rare to find something larger other than plastic bottles and bags. In a park or forest, I will often find twigs, seed pods, rocks, shells, or other organic items that speak to me, but rarely do I pick them up. Most often I have my camera with me, so I photograph them in situ, for they were not discarded. Their visual-aesthetic-art appeal was created by nature; all I’m doing is documenting them.
Discarded ephemera has an entirely different mental/emotional tug on my creative instincts. Its primary intention was to fill a human need, most often a very specific practical one… and yet, I rarely acknowledge that, for I see past that limited goal and envision how its artistic qualities and attributes can be acknowledged and employed to create something never seen before, never intended, never anticipated, never predicted, never envisioned in the way I use it. I never tire of that challenge.
Q: You mention working intuitively and grabbing materials on impulse. What tells you it's time to stop?
A: The great master, Leonardo da Vinci, once said, “An artist can find all the inspiration he needs by staring at an old, weathered wall.” When I stare at one of my many piles of found ephemera to start a project, the spirit of his counsel guides me.
So too, when my intuition silently speaks to me of stepping back from a work, I do so without hesitation. I do not question that directive, for I long ago came to realize it is a divine gift, an endowment, that I will never waste or abuse.
Q: In works like "Skittle Daddle" and "Entwined," light seems to shift how forms behave and feel. How do you think about light while building an image?
A: Light is the most powerful element an artist has for manipulation. It is the one I spend the most time contemplating, altering until my inner eye feels joy, delight, and dare I say, ecstasy. At that moment, I stop revising.
Q: Your images often sit between flatness and depth. What keeps you coming back to that push and pull?
A: Acknowledging that I have been working on flat surfaces for decades creating paintings, drawings, and prints on canvas, paper, and monitor screens, it is paramount that I determine early to what degree flatness will dominate the final rendering of an image and be decisive about it. Thus, I determined early on that modulating the tension between push/pull was much more engaging than selecting one to be dominant. I use that tautness to suggest an invisible life force lying just beneath the surface. I do this because any hint of verve, vim, or vigor in an image is always better than none at all.
Q: You've written that your images can feel familiar, dreamlike, or even unsettling. Is that something you look for, or does it happen on its own?
A: As a result of years of conversations with artists, curators, critics, and collectors, I’ve noted that the more observant among them reference that aspect of my art.
In other words, whatever they and I see isn’t something I deliberately plan for in my work, but it is there. I often feel it has more to do with how I (and others) see life in general. Plus, it probably reflects how our culture is under rapid change, and how many artists are addressing themes of protest and the emotional impact of global challenges without being overly blunt, brusque, or terse about it.
After all, my images of staged pieces of ephemera generate an aesthetic elegance that addresses a subject whose visual persona transcends its socially coerced repute and reflects upon humanity’s consumer-centric existence while articulating critical engagement with the non-material aspects of the subject. Thus, expanding photography’s and digital art’s evolving conversation with contemporary art in general. The work also reflects the fragility of both at a time when the boundaries between fiction and reality have become grossly blurred.
Does that mean that I deliberately bring that mood to the surface of my work? No, I don’t, but I do concede that it often is there, even though I didn’t plan for it to be. You could say that my nonobjective imagery is often an evocation of my subconscious, reflecting a culture under rapid change and occasionally addressing themes of protest and the emotional impact of global challenges.
(Note: I do not use A.I. in any of my art or writing.)
Q: Looking back on your path from working with found objects to digital layering, what still surprises or challenges you about making images?
A: Mmm, “digital layering” is a term with many definitions. I do not use digital layering via a computer program, but rather as a photography technique. In other words, I often stage objects on separate, stacked sheets of glass and photograph directly through all of them at the same time. This old-school layering process allows me to alter the items on one or more of the sheets without altering the others.
It also allows me to visually overlap flat ephemera objects on top of sculptural ones. It achieves more or less the same result as layering via a computer program.
However, it gives me a greater range of lighting, perspective, and focusing options, plus the possibility of taking advantage of chance for the benefit of unplanned visual aesthetics that evoke sensory and emotional responses in viewers of my art. In a way, this process addresses what some call my inventive use of materials and space and how I interact with both.
Plus, my ability to work with both old and new image files to create numerous iterations of one work is also especially enjoyable for me. What’s fun is when an everyday item quietly appears through the initial chaos and presents itself as star of the composition. I cherish those moments of discovery, for they deepen my connection to the necessity of the creative process in human nature.
Edited by Anna Garai
