Lee Godie. G-O-D-I-E. Godie. Sweet Lee lit up the Chicago streets like a jeweled wildfire in my imagination once I learned about who she was. It was 2011 and I would walk down the same streets where it was rumored that Lee halked her art to passersby in front of The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, depending on if she liked your energy or not. Her black and white photobooth photographs she hand etched in with colors and props and handwritten words were shockingly honest and seductive. Her poses, her hair, her deep clear eyes staring at the camera or away, persuading one to look closer, to wonder what she was thinking. I was obsessed with her obsession, her vision, her dramatic and honestly brutal view of the world, of herself in this world. The completion of pulling her universe into existence with her work. She was criminal in the sense that she seemed to be or want to be no other than Lee Goldie despite her different characters, customed in many garments, coloring in what the camera couldn’t catch; her blonde hair, pink lips, rosy cheeks, it was always Lee who emerged.
Holding images of her drawings (her portraits), holding herself, displaying money and other items she was living and documenting her life in the photobooth. I dreamed of Goldie, of her voice, her intensities, of her ghost possessing me. Eventually I moved away from Chicago and found myself living in NYC where a few years ago I came across a photo of her in a gallery and decided to look her up. I remember finding an article that she was murdered in a hotel room in Chicago…is there truth behind that, I am uncertain… But the truth is not only did she captivate me but she has continued to captivate others throughout the years.
-Jen Fisher