I am currently an Undergraduate student at SAIC, with a focus in Visual and Critical Studies and Painting and Drawing. I am writing to express my sincere recommendation of Instructor Ching-Lan Lee. Ms. Lee has had a great impact on my life, and she has truly fostered my passion, exploration, and commitment to the arts.
I started off my art pursuit with Ms. Lee in middle school, whose kind, thorough, and structured approach in lesson planning and projects started my visual arts career strong. During class Ms. Lee would provide frequent and timely feedback and demonstration of newer technical skills, while also instilling the foundational principles in drawing that creates a strong, compelling, and beautiful image, in any kind of medium or style. The ways in which she describes and critiques artwork is incredibly passionate, eye-opening and invigorating. I often found myself being deeply engaged in even simple imagery as something sublime, just as she would. She also inspired my experimentation with the rich artistic heritage of history and culture, engaging with the revolutionary spirit of modern art. As these were introduced to me quite early on, I have been relying on these instilled and practiced foundational concepts and skills in all visual arts I’ve come across in my undergraduate career. It has even led me to pursue curatorial and interpretive career pathways. Ms. Lee’s approach to teaching and critique is not just present in her lessons, but also in her approach to experimental works and projects.
Ms. Lee’s foundational premise and passion for the arts shown in how she led material and idea exploration, along with the projects she would assist in. She accomplished this through thematic teaching, and which engaged me in applying meaning to art, and how medium could be an expression of that. Through her mastery of painting and drawing materials, form-content relationships, and conceptual criticality, she was able to understand and guide my creative endeavors all throughout my time with her, while not pressuring me to be too perfectionist and appreciate just the process of creating. Her project and theme-based teaching really allowed me to be explorative with what I make, and appreciate art for its philosophical advents. Creating art became not about the completion, but rather about the ways art can be engaged in critical thinking, foster spaces of care, and reflect cultural celebration.
Ms. Lee has long been a beloved part of my art journey, and my appreciation for how she has introduced the arts only deepens as I navigate my professional art practice today. Ms. Lee’s joy, passion, and kindness is truly infectious, and has genuinely deepened my appreciation for the world around me, as I consistently aim to find the sublime in anything and anyone, just as she could. She has my highest recommendation—I would love for other students to engage in the same transformational relationship with art as I did with her.
Sincerely,
— Vivian Ji
Junior at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (January, 2026)
Under the tutelage of Ms. Lee between 5th-8th grade.
Ms. Lee Art Class 