Linen, light-sensitive dye, polyfil, & thread.
Linen, light-sensitive dye, polyfil, & thread.
Linen, light-sensitive dye, polyfil, dryer lint, & thread.
Lisa Alberts
Official Sites: Website | Instagram
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lisa Alberts is an artist living with her partner and their two children in metro Detroit, Michigan. Lisa’s motherhood journey and art practice intersect regularly and her children are often active participants in her process, from collecting objects to printing alongside her. Lisa’s work combines alternative photography, textiles, and soft sculpture to explore themes of motherhood, anxiety, and the idea of unearthing. Her work has been exhibited in the US and Canada, and broadly online. Lisa received her Post-Graduate Certificate in The Photographic Image (2010) from Durham University in Durham, England, and her BFA in Fine Art (2005) from Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I use alternative photography techniques to create textiles and soft sculptures that explore ideas of play and repetition and examine the space where anxiety and motherhood meet. The process is central to my work and my children are an inherent part of that process. The act of watching my kids playfully create a sunprint, the act of folding and unfolding fabric, the act of stitching and knotting, are physical representations of ideas I aim to explore in my work. Art and Motherhood are both the knowing and the unknowing, the creation and the healing of wounds, the isolation, and the never-aloneness. I like to investigate the duality of this uncertainty amidst repetition. In my Acute Onset series, I give my young children free rein to make large sunprints in my studio, which I then sew up and twist into tightly bound knots. These pieces explore the weight of anxiety alongside the playfulness of childhood activities such as imagining, gathering, ordering, and archiving.
CREATIVE PRACTICE
To me, my process is a sort of reflection of my parenthood experience. It’s a balance between having a plan and being flexible enough to embrace the unknown, the surprises. I work almost entirely out of my basement studio and my backyard. It used to be that my kids were nearly always underfoot and working alongside me but as they grow that’s becoming less and less the case, leaving room for me to explore my work in a more methodical way. This has been both unsettling and empowering as I relearn how to make work entirely by myself.
EXAMPLES OF ARTIST’S WORK
Photo from Acute Onset.
Work created by Lisa Alberts.
Photo of process.
Work created by Lisa Alberts.
Photo from Acute Onset.
Work created by Lisa Alberts.
Photo from Acute Onset.
Work created by Lisa Alberts.
Photo from Acute Onset.
Work created by Lisa Alberts.
