Artists Spotlight: Dana Lynn Louis
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| Work from Dana's Faith: Suspended at The Art Gym |
Dana Lynn Louis, sculptor and public artist
Recipient RACC 2007 Project Grant; Public Art Commissions for the City of Portland in 2003 & 2004
Dana Lynn Louis works both as a studio artist, creating delicate sculpture, drawings and prints, and as a public artist. Dana has employed a variety of media including bronze, glass, mica, steel, water, tile, and landscape to create both temporary and permanent installations, and she continues to investigate new media.
Dana's projects have been increasing in scale the last several years. Recent commissions include Suspended Migration, a four-story multi-media installation at City Hall in Portland, Oregon to honor Mayor Vera Katz; The Color of Breath, a kaleidoscope of shape and color at Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in Tacoma, Washington; and Essence of Our Nature, a ceramic and glass artwork at the Oregon Convention Center.
From February 25-March 28, 2007 Dana will fill The Art Gym at Marylhurst University with a major new installation, Faith: Suspended. The space will become a large installation of multi-media work, executed in glass, beads, sculptural wire forms, mica, paintings, space and light (see above). Creating images suggesting delicacy and complexity intrinsic to nature and our place in it, has been the subject of artist's work for many years.
During October of 2007, Dana was a South Waterfront Artist-in-Residence (AiR) where she presented, Nocturnal Notations: A Living Installation (at left). The work has been conceived and built on site and references both the artist’s as well residents’ and visitors’ dreams offered throughout the month. A ‘Living Installation’ means that the objects in the installation will be purposely inhabited during the open studio in ways that forward and nuance their meaning. During her residency, Dana explored the question of how one dreams a community into being. The accumulated installation draws connections between Dana’s experience of communities in West Africa and the very fluid process of creating community that is evident daily in the SWF neighborhood. Issues in this work involve the fluctuations in privacy between the daytime and nighttime, publicly shared space and use, as well as the collaborative energy required to co-habitate.
In March 2008 Dana Lynn Louis received the prestigous Pollock-Karsner Grant from the Foundation founded by Lee Krasner in memory of her husband, Jackson Pollock. Only a few Portland artists have ever received this national award.
From June 5-29, 2008, Dana will have an exhibition of recent work, Reflection (at right), at the Nine Gallery, 122 NW 8th Avenue, Portland (in the Blue Sky Gallery). Dana's installation will not only absortb the viewer into the work - literary - but will transport the thinking eye to a profoundly personal space of depth, reflection and inquiry.
Dana's work has been exhibited and collected across the Pacific Northwest, as well as in California, ARizona, Wisconsin, New York and West Africa. Articles about her work have appeared in Sculpture Magazine, Artweek and the German periodical Glashaus.
Contact Information:
website: www.4culture.org/publicart/registry/sites/sites_artist.asp?ArtistID=48
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RACC Staff to Contact
Mary Bauer
Communications Associate
503.823.5426
mbauer@racc.org
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