In Place - Lisa Lofgren & Lee Somers Opening Reception

The McLean County Arts Center presents the exhibition In Place, artwork of Lisa Lofgren & Lee Somers, from June 27 – August 9, 2014. An Opening Reception, free and open to the public, will be on Friday, June 27 from 5 to 7 pm in the Brandt Gallery.

The exhibition In Place pairs the artwork of printmaker Lisa Lofgren & sculptor Lee Somers, two artists who combine mapping geography with memories of lands each have traveled in distinct ways. Through layering and collaging prints, Lofgren creates strata of landscapes that wrap around the gallery walls while Somers fills the gallery floor with a cut-out wood sculptural map of the many places he has traveled and lived.

Lisa Lofgren describes her installation of prints as her “interpretation of what surrounds us, both below and above the earth’s surface. Pieces are hung to suggest being underground, at the horizon and elevated in relation to our designated eye level line. Each print combines the fabric and folds often seen in Japanese Ukiyo-e prints with a view or cross-section of land formations from Wyoming, the state I call home, inspired by John McFee’s book titled Rising from the Plains. I intend for the overlapping elements to form rhythms and patterns that confuse what is perhaps water and what is clothing or what is rock and what is a blanket, all different versions of coverings. This discovery of what lies beneath may lead viewers to questions our roles in this delicate interweaving of person and place. What we perceive as being covered is being revealed to us both by natural causes and human influences.”

Lee Somers exhibits his sectional and layered wood sculpture Some Places I’ve Been. The piece is “the current iteration of an ongoing project made from maps I have collected along the way. Mounting the maps to plywood allows me to work with them as layered planes in space. Cutting along the lines of waterways, roads and borders, I revisit places in imaginary voyages to the drone of the scroll saw. The resulting pile of parts is intuitively puzzled and stacked together based on relationships of space, color, and shape. A mythical topography takes form, mapping a dream world of juxtaposed memories and locations.”

Lisa Lofgren is an artist and educator promoting community involvement for creative outlets. She is the founder of a community printmaking and papermaking facility titled print&paper in coordination with cometogetherstudios in Bloomington, Illinois and owner of Main Gallery 404 in Downtown Bloomington. She is currently an Adjunct Faculty member at Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois. Lofgren graduated from the University of Wyoming with a BFA and went on to Illinois State University to finish her MFA. Lofgren continued to refine her craft by working at High Point Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Mannekin Press in Bloomington, Illinois; and Normal Editions Workshop in Normal, Illinois. Her artwork has been on display in various galleries and private collections throughout the West and Midwest and abroad in Italy, India, and Malaysia.

Originally from Colorado, Lee Somers currently lives and works in Montevallo, Alabama as an Assistant Professor of Art and Instructor of Three Dimensional Design at the University of Montevallo. Lee Somers received both his MFA and BFA from Alfred University School of Art and Design in Alfred, New York. He has shown in several cities in China, including Beijing, where he taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts City Design School for several years.