Jalees Nagee belongs to the ‘old is gold’ generation of disting­uished individuals. A former student of luminaries such as Anna Molka and Naseem Hafeez Qazi, she completed her Masters in Fine Arts from The University of Punjab, and later received a scholarship from the Ford Foundation to do a Masters in Related Arts from Wisconsin University in the US.

Earlier, she had taught for a short while at the arts department of Lahore College, as well as Queen Mary College. She also remembers having taught a number of now senior artists, including Salima Hashmi and Musarrat Hasan.

On her return from the US, she joined the Related Arts Department at the Government College of Home Economics Lahore, where she taught for 35 years, also serving as the head of her department.

While painting and sculpture in particular did preoccupy her, it was her passion for craft arts that especially became her forte. She was actually the first one in the local art scene to learn the painstaking technique of making stained glass items, and her creativity in this domain was well-known in her hey days. One of the examples of her work is the stained glass windows that were commissioned by Syed Wajid Ali for the Olympic Museum in Lahore in the late ’70s.

Later, when other individuals started making cheap versions of ‘stained glass’, wherein glass was simply painted and outlined with epoxy resin rather than being made by joining individual pieces of coloured glass with lead channels, Nagee would often express her deep displeasure at the substandard version of a pristine craft art she had so diligently learnt and practised.

While Jalees Nagee likes to paint and sculpt, it’s her passion for craft arts that, over the years, became her forte

Other craft arts that she developed an expertise in and introduced to be taught at the College of Home Economics, were handmade rugs, macrame, handloom weaving and screen printing. Her talent in producing exquisite handmade fabric flowers was also one of the novel crafts that she was known for, many decades ago.

Another endeavour of hers that one remembers is her attempt to introduce jewellery design as a subject, taking great pains to study the requirements of equipment and training needed. Sadly, various financial constraints curtailed this dream of hers. A thorough professional, she never tolerated half measures, and often even lost her patience when confronted with individuals who tried to work in an unprofessional way.

Her students and colleagues would surely recount how she was invariably struggling to enforce her point of view with regards to maintaining high standards. This latter quality often made her even unpopular with various colleagues but, nonetheless, in the long term, became the reason for her gaining respect and admiration.

As mentioned earlier sculpture was also her favoured medium of expression, and she won a national award for one of her pieces that was exhibited at the Alhamra Art Gallery in Lahore. One can clearly recall that particularly unusual art work, which had been created out of various metallic spare parts of vehicles, to represent a female figure. In those days, contemporary abstract sculptures were a rarity in Pakistan.

After her retirement from teaching, Nagee settled with her brother and his family in the US and still continues to live there, visiting her hometown Lahore only occasionally. For many years, she also showcased her work abroad, but now seems to be bored with all that. Interestingly, she now seems more concerned about the socio-political scenario in Pakistan, and would rather come back and do something to encourage population control! Here is wishing Nagee she lives long and with good health to make this contribution.

Published in Dawn, EOS, December 27th, 2020