June 2010

artists: Heather Joy and Gloria Lamson

 

During the month of June, VALISE gallery presents "Ecotones," new work by VALISE member Heather Joy and Port Townsend artist Gloria Lamson. Joy and Lamson both draw on the natural world as a source of material and inspiration for their artwork, exploring "social sculpture" as a field of transformation. Both artists see art as a way to shape a more humane and ecologically viable society through art.  Both question their experience and response to the changes taking place in the world, and hope their work may illuminate these questions for others.

Ecotones = transitional zones of tension between two different ecological systems. Joy's work contains land-based references, while Lamson draws on human systems.

 

Joy uses photography to document human-made ecotones, representations of human attempts to control natural systems. Over the past five years, she has created a series of aerial photographs, taken from her window seat, while traveling on commercial flights. At VALISE this June, Joy will manipulate the gallery space through a choreographed display of photographs and lines, focusing on the current catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

Lamson creates temporary site-responsive installations and interactions in nature and architectural environments, using natural and common human materials. She uses various forms of 3D lines (rope, twine, elastic, branches, etc) to engage both her surroundings and the viewer. Her sense of "ecotone" is grounded in considerations of human ecology and the interaction between the world within us and the world around us.  For the last 14 years Lamson has worked primarily outdoors, creating temporary installations and interactions with nature. Fire, water, wind, gravity, time and light activated this work, which she documented through photographs. For the VALISE exhibit she moves indoors, to create installations that reference the process of change within human experience. 

The opening reception for "Ecotones" is First Friday, June 4 from 6-9pm.  The show will run throughout the month of June. VALISE gallery is open every Saturday, from 11 am-5 pm, and by appointment.

 

For more information, contact VALISE artist member Heather Joy, 206.551.3180.