A Place of Honor

I recently read Broken For You by Stephanie Kallos and Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. As often happens, these stories resonated with me on many levels. It's why I love to read. Both novels are steeped in the waters of WWII. Both literally and figuratively broke apart and reassembled my pitifully spotty knowledge of war and its aftermath. The seed mosaic that resulted is A Place of Honor, borrowing a phrase from the last page of Chapter 28 in Part Three of Broken For You.

  

"The next time you break something, consider the action that might not immediately come to mind: Say a prayer of thanks over what has been broken. Then give it a place of honor. Build it a shrine."

A Place of Honor
Honey locust and redbud pods, redbud and
black alder seeds, sycamore bark
22" x 21"

Taking Flight

I love the quick sketch quality of the smaller seed mosaics. They are such a relief from the large scale installations that require tedious planning and repetitive processes. But working on Taking Flight was an invitation to slow down, be with the piece awhile, play with scale and movement, maybe create a narrative that would bring comfort to a grieving heart.

Taking Flight

catalpa and milkweed pods, sycamore bark

April 2013

in the collection of Jeanne and Bill Weggel

Leap of Faith

By far the largest seed mosaic that I have undertaken, at 20" x 28", Leap of Faith was created for the CAW group exhibit, House on Fire, what matters, at High Road Gallery last October. I think what matters most to me is not something I would frantically reach for if my house was on fire, but something that I carry with me, belief without empirical evidence.  Kierkegaard describes the core part of the leap of faith as the leap. It's as much an internal movement as an outward action. I love that.

Leap of Faith

catalpa and trumpet vine pods, sycamore bark

20" x 28"

September 2013

Seed Mosaics

These are a few of the 6" x 6" mosaics that I completed this year. You can find the rest of them HERE. I'll be selling them at ThumbBox at the OAL Gallery through December, at the Pop-Up Holiday Art Sale at Oakland Nursery from 10-4pm on Saturday December 21, and at my studio at Tacocat Cooperative.

Valley View

Ash Cairn

Motet

End of Day

It's been too long...

Now that Life has settled down and my new studio space feels lived in and worked in, I suppose it's time to fill these pages with all that I have been doing since last March. I don't want to blast a bunch of images and info into the ether either, so I'll drib and drab it over the next few weeks.
In short, last April I closed my studio at Junctionview in light of the fact that the building was scheduled to become a parking lot. 12 of us formed a co-op, Tacocat, and moved a stone's throw away. Short distance, lots of trips, tons of stuff, one injured toe (not mine) and a skinned shin (also not mine). I'd call it a success. We officially opened our studio and gallery space in August and have never looked back. (Call me if you need a drywall tutorial, but I might shoot myself)

Officially, #3

Ready for openhouse

Most-used work station

Yep, must have loft

HAIKU in March

I am currently exhibiting at Haiku through the month of March.

In-Between is an exhibit of a series of seed mosaics that I work on between larger installations. They are simple landscapes and designs inspired by my travels through rural and small town Ohio. Constructed of seeds, bark, pods, and shells, these small-scale works are a quick, expressive means for exploring ideas and experimenting with materials collected from the very places I try to depict.

River's Edge

Spiral Trace

Undercurrent

I met Randall Perkins today

I met Randall Perkins today. He was seated at a table, pencil in fine-fingered hand and paper already filled with images. He had only just arrived at Open Door Studio. From his silvery brush-cut hair and his grizzled chin to his softly rounded Buddha belly he oozed charm and cheer. Eyes bashfully down he mentioned he needed a shave then asked if I had a coke. I’m in love.

I met Randall Perkins today, but I really met him ten weeks ago when I set eyes on his painting "Receding Dreamscape" that was on exhibit at the Columbus Metropolitan Library. It glowed. The Naples yellow shapes, impossibly supported by slender black stalks, popped against the mysterious magenta landscape. And I heard a story whispering in my ear, a tale of purpose and place.

Receding Dreamscape

"Safeguarding the Dream" is a slice of that place, the center of that world where dreams are collected, protected, and preserved.

This piece was created in response to Randall Perkins "Receding Dreamscape". Both works of art will be on display at Open Door Art Studio along with 28 other works created by artists from Open Door and Mother Artists at Work. The exhibit is titled "This Inspired That" and it opens this Saturday, April 14, 2012 with a reception from 5-7pm and closes on June 1. The gallery is open to the public Tuesday through Friday 9am-5pm and Saturday 12-5pm (call 614-486-4919).

 

Safeguarding the Dream

56" x 24" x 24"

Kentucky Coffeetree pods and seeds,

corrugated cardboard, wood, glass

April 2012 

(detail)

(detail)

CAW Exhibition, opening reception and reviews

CAW Creating Our History

lindentproductions

created by Lindsay Caddie LaPointe

The Shot Tower Gallery

March 5-April 20, 2012

This exhibition has received a lot of coverage for which I am grateful. On March 22 the Columbus Dispatch published a review by Melissa Starker and on April 7 Columbus Underground published a review by Jeff Regensburger. If support can be measured by the written word, the creative women of Columbus have reached a rarely attained pinnacle. Please try to see this amazing exhibition.

CAW : Creating Our History

Nine hours later, Ascension is installed.

 

Ascension

14' x 8' x 8'

Sycamore bark, steel, jeweler's wire

 Ascension (detail)

Ascension (detail)

CAW : Creating Our History

First day of install for Ascension at the Shot Tower Gallery. These are 15' ceilings! The Exhibition of large works by 28 artists from Creative Arts of Women runs from March 5 - April 20, 2012. The opening reception is from 6-8pm Thursday March 22.

     

 

Shrinking my world

It's always good to try new things. Honing a skill is the perfect reason to give myself permission to be a little messy, a little careless, a little off topic. Since my next series is "All About the Crown," I plan to shrink my world and enter the realm of the jeweler. Much easier said than done.

Linked In

Copper

1 1/2" x 7 1/2"

Holding Pattern, a work in progress.

Holding Pattern is in the Strands exhibit in the Carnegie Gallery at our own award-winning  Columbus Metropolitan Library along with many fine works by the artists of Creative Arts of Women (CAW)

My work doesn’t often lend itself to themed exhibitions but I was drawn to create a piece for Strands in support of the Hair Theater Fund: http://www.hairtheater.net/fund/fund.html  

 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

For me, a strand is a thread of conversation. It is a woven pattern of memories. It is a wisp-thin filament that stitches together fragile moments. It is the last, tacit connection as seed falls from tree, leaving behind the stem, once nurturing and strong. Holding Pattern is a testament to the power of tacit connections and a witness for memories too often relegated to the back of the drawer.

Holding Pattern

Cotton loop-woven potholders, copper wire, Sunset Maple seed stems

63" x 72"

(detail)

 

 

 

 

 

 

(detail)

Rose Mallow Series, Winter's Toll

Exhibited in CAW's PAPERazzi Exhibition at MadLab in Columbus, Ohio and juried into the 67^th Ohio Annual, Zanesville Museum ofArt, Zanesville, OH

 Winter's Toll

Vellum, copper wire, Honeylocust thorns, Hickory shells

27" x 16" x 6"

(detail)

Rose Mallow Series, Hail Mary

It is important to contemplate the mysteries 

and remember that

 when action fails, there is only prayer

  beads that don't slide 

smoothly through these fingers 

mother

In May, 2011, I was proud to exhibit this piece as well as Sycamore Series, Halo with Mother Artists at Work at the Concourse Gallery in Upper Arlington, Ohio. You can read a review of the exhibit here.

  Rose Mallow Series, Hail Mary

Copper mesh, wire, wood, Honeylocust thorns,

and plastic glow-in-the-dark figurines

12' x 6' x 2'

(detail)

Rural Routes (not your traditional landscape) Exhibition featuring works by Claire E Smith and Catherine Bell Smith

This exhibition at the Ohio Art League Gallery with Claire E. Smith took place last April. The show consisted of lithographs, drawings, and three large sculptures.  The series of lithographs and the sculpture "Black Angus" are the creations of Claire Smith and can be viewed here. The drawings, Sentinels of Route 68, and the sculptures, Reliquaries and Watershed are mine. The opening was Thursday, April 7 and it was packed with friends and family from Columbus, Cleveland, Wausau, and Chicago. Their support was overwhelming.

                                   

 Sentinels on Route 68 I, II, III, IV

 Charcoal on rag paper

   53" x 24"

 

 

Reliquaries

Hardware cloth, screen, steel, fountain grass seeds

3' x 10' x 14'

Reliquaries (detail)

Reliquaries (detail)

Milkweed Series

Longhorns (Chocolate Pecans & Caramel)

2011

Chocolate box, paper, mesh and milkweed seeds

15" x 12"

a submission for Eat, Drink and be Merry

Rural Routes (not your traditional landscape)

An installation about impressions, memory, distances, and place and the route that connects them.

    

 Watershed (detail)

2011

4' x 8' x 35'

Fountain grass, wire mesh, steel columns

In April, I am privileged to exhibit at the Ohio Art League Gallery with Claire E. Smith. The show will consist of lithographs, drawings and three large sculptures creating the installation, Rural Routes (not your traditional landscape). The opening is Thursday, April 7 from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. The location is 1552 North High Street Columbus, OH 43201-1121.The exhibition will run from April 7 through April 29.

Rural Routes, Mystery Tour

The Rural Routes Series is inspired by the long, repeated trips along 71 between Columbus and Cleveland. Driving at high speed through a landscape in order to arrive at a destination only allows glimpses of the whole picture. Memory strings those images together, shifting size, losing detail, overlapping structures, collapsing distances. A thread develops and the countryside that separated two places becomes the route that connects two homes. And what you call home begins to include those spaces between.

Mystery Tour, Route 161

 Charcoal, copper wire and hickory nut shells

 1-14, 13" x 8"  15-20, 6" x 6"

November 2010

      

Sycamore Series

The Sycamore tree, belonging to Earth’s oldest clan of trees, Planataceae, presides regally over every landscape it graces. Look out over winter’s bone yard when the sky is this planet’s deepest blue and linger on the pristine white branches of these iconic giants.

The bark of all trees must yield to a growing trunk but the Sycamore invites the world to witness its growth as its outer layers, intractable and dusty with age, split and spall in great irregular masses. This bark, like shed skin or old beliefs or lessons learned, settles on the ground at the base of each mammoth; proof in the form of a disappearing halo, that life means growth--painful, messy, necessary.

Halo
Installation
Sycamore bark
16' x 16'
September 2010

Birds

So, Fly!

Alabaster and steel
4' x 3" x 18"
June 2010

So, fly! was included in Birds of C.A.W.-An Art Exhibition curated by Helma Groot at C.S.Gallery in June, 2010