When art meets science

A pencil and an eraser — unlikely tools for a jet-setting entrepreneur, but Dr Irene Lee counts them as must-haves, especially during business meetings.

They are, in fact, the first items she lays on the table at the start of our interview, using them to jot down notes or draw pictures to illustrate her point. That, more than anything else, speaks of the soul of an artist in one who has been an environmental scientist, academic, business manager and social entrepreneur.

“The pencil allows one to be more creative ... there’s an instinctive freedom and subtle nuances to every stroke,” says Dr Lee, who eschews ballpoint pens and took four years of Chinese brush painting classes.

Elegant, immaculate and with well-coiffed hair, the Singaporean alumnus of the Harvard and Cornell universities (she is President of the Harvard Club of Singapore) has three companies to her name — one of which is a newly set-up social enterprise, Little Sun, that distributes solar-powered lamps to impoverished regions around the world.

Her journey has taken her from Tokyo, Japan — where she was awarded two postdoctoral fellowships, one of which was with the United Nations University — to Germany, where she was a university scientist and regional manager for an international environmental conglomerate, and back to Asia, where she helped set up and manage offices in the Asia-Pacific region for a German world market leader in the solar industry.

But for Dr Lee, who is single, it all comes back to her first passion. “Art is my reason for existence,” asserts the trained architect who, when asked her age, simply says she was “born in the ’60s”.

ART AND ALTRUISM

The daughter of a doctor and a teacher, she recalls how her love for art began in Primary 1 at CHIJ Opera Estate (now known as CHIJ Katong Convent).

She forgot her art assignment one day and hastily painted one on the spot. A few days later, she was summoned to the principal’s office and, as she watched a group of girls before her being scolded, wondered if she would be punished, too. It turned out, in fact, that she had won first prize in a competition for her painting of a dustbin depicting the Keep Singapore Clean Campaign theme.

“I remember being very encouraged, receiving a S$15 MPH gift voucher,” she says. She whips out this life-changing painting, which she has carefully preserved and brought along to the interview with other personal works ranging from Chinese art to still-life drawings.

She went on to pursue triple sciences at CHIJ Katong Convent and Temasek Junior College, but she still painted and drew when she could. In junior college, she was President of the Art Club and, when she was studying architecture at the National University of Singapore (NUS), her father hired a tutor to teach her Chinese brush painting. “I would paint after my teacher left at 8pm to 5am the next day.”

She speaks fondly of her dad, Dr Francis Lee, a general practitioner who supported her artistic flair and taught her about altruism with his heavy involvement in the community.

“My late father was a very good man and I was inspired by him. There were patients who rang the house doorbell at 3am, and he would always open the door and treat them. If they couldn’t afford to pay, he wouldn’t charge them,” says Dr Lee, who followed in his spirit by designing hospitals and schools for the needy in Indonesia and Cambodia, among other contributions.

WORKING FOR THE U.N.

After graduating from NUS, Dr Lee was one of only five students to earn a place in the elite Master of Architecture (Urban Design) programme at Cornell University in the United States. She became interested in urban design after a traineeship stint at the Housing and Development Board, where she also learnt about the importance of the environment in cities.

At Cornell, Dr Lee minored in fine arts and art history (she incidentally also holds a diploma in piano performance and plays the violin), and saw her “dream come true” with her first solo exhibition of contemporary Chinese paintings in New York.

With a scholarship from the American Institute of Architects, she did her doctorate in environmental management and technology at Harvard, which she completed in two-and-a-half years. She ended up accepting a job offer she “couldn’t refuse” in Germany, which was the strongest in the world in environmental technology, and eventually became the group’s regional manager for the Asia-Pacific.

Then, in 2001, the UN awarded her a postdoctoral fellowship to conduct research on urban ecosystems. “I took a drastic pay cut, but I thought it was worth it because it is once in a lifetime that one gets a chance to work for the UN.”

Apart from rubbing shoulders with Nobel laureates, the highlight for her was meeting former US President Bill Clinton. She also learned about the power of education to empower the disadvantaged — a lesson she has carried into her current venture, Little Sun.

LITTLE SUNS FOR THE POOR

The social enterprise project began last year after Dr Lee met Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson — famed for The Weather Project at the Tate Modern in London — at a dinner party. Mr Eliasson had a design in mind for a solar-powered lamp and roped Dr Lee in to help manufacture the product.

She “worked day and night” for three months on details ranging from the type of neck strap to be used to the kind of solar panels that went with the bright yellow sun-shaped lamps. The company has since sold and distributed more than 60,000 lamps since their launch at the Tate last year, and the lamps have now made their debut at Singapore’s ArtScience Museum.

The enterprise, Dr Lee explains, is based on the principle of sustainability. The lamps are given out to the poor in countries such as Ethiopia, who are also offered five lamps each at cost price and encouraged to start their own businesses.

Apart from Little Sun, she has also started her own company in the solar industry. She had missed getting in touch with her architecture background and “wanted to combine art with science”, she explains.

Asked how she saw the renewable energy markets in Singapore and Germany — where she spends part of her time — Dr Lee says it is difficult to compare the two, given both countries’ differences in size and population.

While Germany has been a technology pioneer in the solar industry, and the government backs investments in new energy technologies through feed-in tariffs, Singapore’s solar sector is relatively new.

But having helped to set up a renewable energy company in Singapore, she notes that there has been quite substantial funding in solar energy research and that leading international solar companies have been encouraged to set up here.

Still, she thinks, “the Singapore Government does not subsidise the consumption of alternative energy sources as it does not believe in subsidising a more costly alternative in an environment where competing options are available”.

She adds: “Education plays an important role in informing the public about renewable energy, the various options available and the accompanying advantages and disadvantages”.

NEVER TOO LATE FOR CHILDHOOD DREAMS

Truly a citizen of the world, Dr Lee has been everywhere from African villages to European art fairs. She makes it a point to visit museums — her favourite is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao — during her overseas trips.

She has also lived in Japan and Germany long enough to pick up the languages and their cultural quirks. For instance, even when leaving the university in Tokyo for home at midnight, she would have to bow and apologise to her supervisor for calling it a day before him.

These days, she is based in both Singapore and Germany, where her company in the solar industry has offices. She is also busy overseeing the Little Sun social enterprise, which has a long-term goal of reaching as many as possible of the 1.6 billion people around the world without reliable access to light.

In spite of her packed schedule, Dr Lee started an art company last year, realising her cherished ambition to raise awareness of Chinese art. She plans to hold exhibitions of local and overseas works, and aims to put local Chinese brush painters on the international scene.

“My dad put me on his lap when I was a little kid and asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up,” she says. “Without hesitation, I said I wanted to be an artist and a scientist.”

Had she chosen to do arts instead of science in school, life could have been very different, she concedes. “But I’ve no regrets, it is still not too late … I am an artist and I will never stop being one,” she says.