Art: In The(ir) Element
About this collection
Originally, we had planned to show new work in 2020. We were aiming for April of 2020 to present our work, right here in this space. Obviously, that didn’t happen. As everything closed and life changed – and then changed again – we filed the exhibition away in the “someday” category of our minds. When we started talking about showing work together again, the conversation was different. Our work has progressed in these last years and our perspectives changed by the year of pandemic life.
What we wish to present now is a sampling of the work we’d created for the 2020 show alongside new pieces that display how this forced stop and now restart has changed our creative vision and work.
From Naomi:
In 2019, I was completely enthralled in the world of lichen and fungus. These tiny civilizations growing right under our noses on tree branches, boulders and forest floors. I would go on a hike with a little magnifying lens to get a good look at their forms, colors and intricate details. That was the driving force behind this original collection.
Through time of isolation, I never stopped making art, it was therapeutic and life-giving. But there were definite changes in my impulses and aims in painting.
One big change has been my desire for pink. There’s something punchy and unsubtle about it that felt very necessary to me during months of isolation. Pink is fresh, alive and optimistic. It wasn’t a conscious decision to use it, it just felt right. I also had a desire to move more freely through my subjects as I paint. Maybe it was months of being locked in, but my natural “control-freak” nature loosened up. These two pivots in my approach have yielded very different results from the same inspiration points.
From Andréa:
I added four new pieces to my collection, photos I took from recent travel to Los Angeles, California. I was able to photograph dancers from Duluth as well as from the University of Dominguez Hills in a collaborative performance. These photos show continued progress from 2020 in capturing highlighted moments of movement.
In The(ir) Element will run through early Summer, 2022.
Artist Statements
Naomi Christenson
I’m a multi-disciplinary artist, inspired by visual patterns in nature. I create colorful, playful riffs off those patterns in my paintings, designs and dances.
I love looking at trees at dusk when they’re silhouetted against the sky; creating a million tiny windows for brilliant colors of light to bleed through. I love seeing footage of invertebrate life in the sea; colorful creatures with translucent skins, moving like water and swirling about the ocean floor. I love finding tiny, magical worlds growing up from the forest floor; mushrooms unfurling with amazing colors and lichen tracing intricate lines around tree branches. I love watching birds flock in the air; hundreds of individual birds, dressed alike, playing follow the leader and mesmerizing me with their collective movement.
In those moments of observation, I’m completely dazzled. I’m itching to somehow join the beauty before me and share it with others. I become a translator of the impression nature’s made on me; creating art pieces so others can experience the intensity and delight of my inspiration in another form.
When I paint, I use bold color, deep space and playful composition to bring the patterns to life. When I dance, I embody some aspect of my inspiration. I give the pattern (or motion or rhythm) a new life in my body as I move and create choreography. When I design, I fold bits of what I see in nature into something tangible and usable. Often my designs are wearable, satisfying my desire to become part of the beauty I see.
With each piece I create, there’s a new opportunity for me to interact and play with the pattern ideas. That excites me.
Andréa Miller
I will forever be intrigued by dance and the supreme control a dancer has over their own body. I love the drama, the feelings that emote without voice, how the upward twist of a grin or an
eyebrow can change your response to a character, and how the way the casting of light can give you a sense of fear or peace. I am grateful for ability performance has to make the rest of the
world disappear.
In 2019 I worked with several local dancers in various outdoor landscapes to focus on the form and line of the body and how it could be highlighted by nature. To add a freshness to the collection for the 2022 exhibition, I printed images from a recent project in Los Angeles with dancers from Duluth and the California State University of Dominguez Hills. It includes images from ‘Considering Matthew Shepard’, first performed locally in February 2020 in collaboration with the Twin Ports Choral Project. It was my first return to the theater since the start of the pandemic and I found myself even more in tune with the simple joys of performance, the bursting energy of the dancers, the stale smell of backstage, the music filling the space.
These dancers too, in their element and highlighted beautifully by the paintings of Naomi Christenson.
*Metal prints purchased from a grant awarded by Arrowhead Regional Arts Council in 2020.