Lee Emi DESTROY EVERYTHING interview

By Tyler Nesler

Sometimes you have to tear apart the stories that you’ve filled your life with before you can truly understand your deepest self. On DESTROY EVERYTHING (out October 2), singer-songwriter and member of indie quartet The Crane Wives, Lee Emi, bravely faces that challenge, dismantling assumptions about identity, kinship, and even her own physical body in search of something more enduring. Written across the compounded isolation of a global pandemic, a rare kidney disease diagnosis, and a lifelong search for belonging as a Korean adoptee raised in Michigan, the album finds Emilee Petersmark stripping identity down to its foundations.

Even the moniker Lee Emi reflects that journey. “My original name was Lee Sang-Eun, but I was always afraid to use it,” she says. “For this project, we’re going to burn down what doesn’t serve us anymore and mix the Western and Eastern culture.” Darker and yet somehow perhaps shinier than her work with The Crane Wives, DESTROY EVERYTHING is less an act of demolition than reinvention—a collection of songs that confronts uncertainty head-on and discovers that self-definition is not a destination, but a lifelong act of creation.

Lee Emi will also release an artbook to coincide with the album. For this interview, she provided detailed statements about several of the artworks, which are included in their captions.

DESTROY EVERYTHING marks your solo debut, but its development spans many years, written amid the pandemic, a rare kidney disease diagnosis, and your lifelong search for belonging as a Korean adoptee raised in Michigan. When did you reach a point where you thought these songs could be assembled into an album? Did you always have a plan to make a solo album, or did this all come together in a more happenstance, organic way?

The decision to make a solo record had been made long before the tracklisting came together, but the project kept getting put on the back burner to make room for more albums and tours with The Crane Wives, which had been my full-time job and main source of income since 2016. It wasn’t until The Crane Wives were on the precipice of a forced hiatus that I started to realistically entertain the idea of embarking on a solo project and putting out a record under my own name, and so I went through the graveyard of my voice memos to find songs that reflected the journey I was currently on, a journey that did not necessarily include The Wives. From that point on, the album (and the project in general) felt like it came together very organically.

A unique element of this project is the many visual artworks that complement the album thematically. Your detailed statements about several of these works are presented here in the captions. How will this art be showcased in the different release formats of DESTROY EVERYTHING? Are there also any plans to eventually exhibit these original works at a gallery, art fair, or a similar setting/event?

I’m releasing an artbook that will coincide with the album release, providing imagery to help build out the world where the songs on the record live. There’s a lot of art in this book that was never shared with an audience before, created at a time when I needed that personal outlet to say things that I wasn’t ready to share. It feels like a big and important step to put these images out with my new record, an opportunity to face myself and embrace every step it took to reach the place where I am now. I’d love to exhibit these works. I’ve never really had the opportunity to put my art in a gallery before. Many of them are small in size, painted in a moleskin sketchbook, and were never created with the intention of being displayed. Maybe I’ll be able to arrange an art show in the future, but for now, it’s terrifying enough just to have these pieces printed in a book.

In your statement for the artwork “Burn Out,” you describe the digital artmaking setup you used for years while touring with The Crane Wives, and at the start of 2020, when the band agreed to ease up on touring, you planned to commit yourself to being a full-time artist. Have music-making and creating visual art always been equally important creative outlets for you, or did you initially engage more with one or the other?

I find both forms of expression incredibly important, but trying to turn both into a job is too much for me. I used to freelance illustration and graphic design for fellow musicians, and while that job was a great exercise in focusing my creativity to help express someone else’s vision, it very quickly burned away all of my creative energy. I ended up abandoning any hope of drawing for pleasure at that time and leaned more heavily into songwriting.

These days, with performing being my main source of income, I find myself drawn back to my sketchbook, feeling inspired to make new art for the first time in a long time. I think it’s all about finding a balance between the two outlets and letting myself float between the two as necessary.

“Empty Spaces” is a part of what you call your “ghost series,” along with the work “How (not) To Evict A Ghost,” which you paired with the song “Clean Slate,” because “it communicates the unspoken message of the song: you cannot run from yourself.” I’m curious about other ways you paired your artworks with the songs on this album, especially your self-portrait series, which feel vulnerable and raw in ways similar to your lyrics. Do any of the self-portraits also correlate to specific songs?

The self-portrait series that I included in this art collection wasn’t necessarily created with the intention of pairing the portraits to songs on the record, but as both the solo project and the self-portrait series progressed, it became obvious to me that several portraits aligned with different experiences expressed on the album.

Self Portrait 1 — “Self Portrait #1” (Sept 2020), Gouache, Prismacolor Pencil, & graphite, 5.5” x 8.5” – “First attempt using gouache, first self portrait after starting treatment for a sudden, unexplained onset of nephrotic syndrome after my kidneys stopped processing protein. This was also my first foray into exploring identity through the lens of visual art, allowing me to find new ways to connect with myself and my body as it changed in ways that were beyond my control. I wanted to capture a snapshot of how I was feeling at the time, knowing that most of my symptoms were invisible to the outside eye, drifting with quiet uncertainty.”

Self Portrait 2 — “Self Portrait #2” (Nov 2020), Gouache, Prismacolor Pencil, & graphite, 5.5” x 8.5” – “This self portrait was painted while I was undergoing tests and throwing treatments at the wall for my kidney disease, returning to the hospital again and again during quarantine for lab work that gave inconclusive results. I’d never dealt with chronic illness before, and the stress of not having a name for what was wrong with me created a sense of pressure that I couldn’t find an outlet for. I wanted this self portrait to express the frustration that came with being unable to fix what was wrong with my body.”

Self Portrait 3 — “Self Portrait #3” (Jan 2021), Gouache, 5.5” x 8.5” – “First fully-gouache portrait, finally becoming more comfortable with the medium after months of practice. This portrait was painted after finally receiving a diagnosis for my kidney disease: Minimal Change Disease, a rare kidney/autoimmune disease that affects about 2 in every 10,000 children and is much less common in adults. There is no known cure, and because it’s such a rare disease, treatment options are limited. I was put on high-dose steroids to combat the nephrotic syndrome, which suppressed my immune system and made me incredibly vulnerable, isolating me even more just as the USA was starting to open up after lockdown. I used this self-portrait as a way to process the grief I was feeling. I didn’t know if I’d ever reach remission and be able to engage with society the way I used to. I didn’t know if I’d ever be healthy enough to perform in public again. This piece shows just how exhausted I was feeling from fighting with my own body, and how devastatingly lonely it was to have to do it without being able to be with my family and friends.”

You’ve worked with the director Hwa-Jeen Na on the videos for “Smoke In Empty Rooms” and “Clean Slate.” Both have very distinctive surreal visual styles and narratives. How closely did you work with him in formulating the overall concepts for the videos, and also with the production design team, Bad Trip Design? What was the collaborative relationship and chemistry like with everyone involved?

Hwa-Jeen, Patrick Bird of Bad Trip Design, and I collaborated a ton when it came to the visuals for the music videos. Each video went through several rounds of storyboarding and editing, with some huge pivots to avoid having too many crossover visuals with other artists releasing music in the meantime (looking at you, Mitski).

We wanted “Clean Slate” to be the strongest of the three narratively, telling a story that felt specific to the Korean diaspora. We filmed that video on 16mm film over the course of three days, and those three days felt a little like theater kid boot camp. I’m not an actor by any means, and this was my first real experience filming a full narrative video, so it was a challenge to keep up with the very knowledgeable and efficient crew. Thankfully, the team was patient with my inexperience, and we worked really well together under very tight deadlines.

“Smoke in Empty Rooms” was filmed in one day, with most of the magic happening afterward thanks to our VFX editor Brennan Huizinga. Pat was able to rig up a couple of mannequins with smoke effects, which were multiplied by Brennan in post-production. The vibe of this music video was inspired from a few drawings I’d made for the DESTROY EVERYTHING artbook, reflecting a surrealism that felt notably different than “Clean Slate.”

I can’t wait for y’all to see the video we made for “Destroy Everything.” Pat’s art direction really takes center stage.

You have an album release show in Grand Rapids on October 3, and you’ll be touring extensively through the Midwest and East Coast in November. I see DESTROY EVERYTHING as a multidisciplinary/multimedia project, so do you have any plans to incorporate any kind of art/production design into the shows (costuming, video projections, movement, etc.)?

Initially, I’d been working towards an art show in NYC on an off-day during the tour, but unfortunately, due to scheduling, those plans fell through. I will be bringing copies of the DESTROY EVERYTHING artbook on tour with me, and can’t wait to share those illustrations with my audience. I’ll also be incorporating a more Korean-inspired wardrobe into my Lee Emi performances. It’s been exciting to find modern takes on traditional Korean clothing. My partner, Korey, has recently taken up sewing, and he’s made me several hanbok-inspired outfits that I’m really proud to show off.

DESTROY EVERYTHING is out October 2. Click here for tour dates and tickets.

Homepage featured photo by Lori M. Gottschling

View more of Lee Emi’s artworks along with her statements about each piece: