Jackson: How do you get your ideas? Your art is different from anything else I have seen.
Lisa: I am always looking at and thinking visually about the world around me, the mundane visual poetics of the day to day are often a formal source for my creative output, but rarely the direct content. For example, the installation you enjoyed titled "Unfurled" was cued visually by watching my young daughter flying a kite, but the piece has nothing to do with that experience, me, or my daughter. The piece is ultimately about moving through landscape, engaging the architecture of the specific gallery it was created for, the language of painting and sculpture, visual gestures, beauty, movement, engaging the audience in a way that questions who the real actor is - is it the sculpture that is walked in and around, or, is it the viewer moving around the work? I also allow the objects and ideas I am experimenting with in my studio to organically inform and lead me to the next project or point of inquiry. There is a list of ideas/concerns/goals I am continually working to dissect/contemplate/achieve in my studio practice:
objects which are simultaneously presented as drawings/paintings/and sculptures
abstraction and conceptualism with figuration and narrative
tension and gesture - formal, intellectual, and emotional
beautiful and thoughtful moments and casual and residual artifacts
specific and vague experiences intimacy and aloofness
I am trying to connect all these dots in the most visually direct way I can.
Jackson: How old were you when you first became interested in art? Did something happen that made you think wow?
Lisa: I was not a child who plugged into the arts beyond the basic art classes in school. I drew and wrote stories, but I did not have a kind of overt affinity for picture making that when children showcase it, adults immediately nurture it, until it becomes natural for a child. Instead I was given real access to the arts in college when I was working towards a degree in Cultural Anthropology and was required to take a Basic Design Course. I loved the process of making and thinking about ways to articulate the principles of design for the class assignments - learning a new language. After that first class I signed up for a photography course. The next thing you know I had a BFA in printmaking and photography, and soon after, an MFA in spatial arts. My visual language was developed and nurtured through the practice of photography and I still feel a strong aesthetic alignment to the works of Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, and Edward Weston - photographers I deeply admired as a beginning art student. My work may seem different than theirs, but the foundation of my art ABC's was constructed by studying these artists.
Jackson: If you could meet any artist living or dead, who would it be and why?
Lisa: I would relish a conversation about art, aesthetic experiences, materiality, New York City, politics, and the 80s with Felix Gonzalez-Torres. I have long admired his work. While I am not driven to create art rooted in political activism, I am deeply drawn to his aesthetic, his ability to change mundane materials with intense poetry and intimacy, and of course, the theatrical nature of his work. While has long ago ago passed away, when I have the opportunity to experience his objects in a museum space they feel incredibly alive and present. It is always exciting for me to stand in front of his artwork. I marvel how he masterfully achieved many of the objectives I strive to achieve in my studio practice. His works are tools for experience and contemplation; curious and mysterious while being incredibly direct and intimate. I can't think of an art work by Felix that is not a slam dunk. He died so young...I wonder what he would be interested in making/expressing if he were still here. Oh and I would love to time travel to 1927 to spend a long weekend in New York City with Dorothy Parker - that would be a real education.
