UPDATE!!!

It's been a while! I've been busy and Instagram has taken over most of my digital record-making. But there's something nice about a blog, isn't there? Something more deliberate and slow and intimate. 

Recently I have been...

* FUNDRAISING for Creating Language Through Arts. We received another grant to continue our Arts Residencies that focus on using art as a language when there are communication barriers present due to hearing loss. Our new Metropolitan Regional Arts Council grant requires that we provide some matching funds so we are fundraising left and right! If you are able to contribute (even $10!) we will be eternally grateful. You can do so HERE. (These are some of our Third grade students)



* Participating in my new fellowship. I am honored to announce that I have been selected as a fellow for Art(ists) on the Verge 7. AOV is an intensive, mentor-based fellowship program for 5 Minnesota based emerging artists working experimentally at the interstion of art and technology. Myself, along with artists Eric F. Avery, Torre Edahl, Jessica Henderson and Joshua McGarvy will participate in a year-long program that will culminate in an exhibition at The Soap Factory in the Spring of 2016. Art(ists) on the Verge is generously supported by the Jerome Foundation. 

* Exploring new media- in January of this year I created a video that has been a long time in the making. This endeavor combines my love of writing with video performance and story telling and draws heavily on my experience growing up with a profound and progressive hearing loss. You can click here to view it on vimeo. 

* Working my butt off in the studio getting ready for upcoming shows at Public Functionary and The Phipps Center. I'm focusing on larger works, and I have six in-progress 4' paintings in the studio at the moment. So far my attempts to deliberately change the way I make art has been both challenging and rewarding. Change is a heavy thing and has its own order. All I can say about these new pieces is that they feel distressed, un-done, weathered, unraveled. Maybe I need to literally demolish these pieces in order to grow?

A short video of how I spent most of the past year - hunched over, listening to Beck, working

I spent the past year cranking out work for a bunch of deadlines. This was both a good learning experience and excruciatingly stressful. Moving forward with new work this year. I am focusing on intentionally making changes in how I work and what I am aesthetically producing. I want to risk more, tear up all of my old tendencies/habits and build some new ones. 

This summer

This little corner of my studio has seen a lot of action:



















I have been listening to this album repeatedly: 



And I discovered this movie, which is almost flawless in my opinion:

Mostly I have been working this summer. I had three deadlines(two of them major) back to back to back and although I learned a lot, it wasn't much fun. And now the days start and end in a cool curve that is not summer and I prepare to teach again and take comfort in the fact that the year ahead of me will be calmer and full of just one really big project that I am so damn excited about. 

Elements Unheard at the MacRostie Art Center

My solo show Elements Unheard opens at the MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids, MN next month.

MacRostie Art Center
405 1st Ave NW
Grand Rapids, MN 55744

I am lucky and honored to say that I received an Artist Initiative Grant from the MN State Arts Board to produce the work for this show which is a visual investigation of my senses and how I experience my self and the world through them. Below is the Artist Statement I have produced for this show:

My artwork is the result of an intuitive process and is a reflection of the space I enter when I am creating. I lean over my paintings, a stiffness in the tips of my fingers. I carry my body around. I write my body down. Fiber by fiber. Cell by cell. The hours are long and I have never been more aware of how my good body aches.  

My experience of the world has been altered and defined by a significant and progressive hearing loss that started in early childhood. It is a distinct lens through which I perceive my self and the world. Through this latest body of work I am conducting a visual investigation of my senses and how my body experiences these senses. What does sound look like? How does it move through my body? How do my senses attach themselves to each other and mix up? 

Liza Sylvestre is a fiscal year 2014 recipient of an artist initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. 

N E W W O R K

1/ I Open and Close
Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel
22" x 30"
2/ Nighttime Seeping into Both Sides of the Day
Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel

18" x 18"

3/ The Morning Started in Pieces Far Out on the Water

Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel

18" x 18"

4/ The Consistent Shuffle, the Steady Stretch

Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel

18" x 18"

5/ To Show you Who I am I Dove Into the Sea

Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel

16" x 20"

6/ Element XXI

Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel

10" x 10"

7/ Element XXII

Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel

10" x 10"

8/ Element XXIII

Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel

10" x 10"

9/ Element XXIV

Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel

10" x 10"

10/ Element XXV

Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel

10" x 10"

11/ Element XXVI

Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel

10" x 10"

12/ Element XXVII

Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel

10" x 10"

13/ Element XXVIII

Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel

10" x 10"

14/ Element XXIX

Acrylic and Archival Ink on Panel

10" x 10"

Lately . . .

. . . I have been busy with Holiday festivities and the hashing out of some new large scale paintings for my upcoming solo show. 

But these things have also been happening . . .

My work on the A List of the City Pages 

One of my Coil prints at a convention with Mammoth & Co.

Walking through the snow to pick up a package. 

Added some new original Element paintings to my shop. 

SooLocal Holiday Show + Pop Up Shop

Yesterday I dropped off these five new Element paintings at the Soo Local Holiday location. I got a sneak peak of all the awesome art that will be part of the show and I must say, these paintings will be in good company!!!

SooLocal is located at 3506 Nicollet. The show opens on the 30th of this month! 

My MN Original Interview is up and running

In the studio this week...

...I've been working on new pieces for an upcoming Enormous Tiny Art Show at Nahcotta.

Kaleidoscope

Easter was spent eating and taking kaleidoscope photos.

MN Original

I was recently interviewed for MN Original and these are some photos from that day which I stole from their instagram site. 

I will post a link to the interview once it's up.

Things about today

I'm holding Coil XV print

Today was snow flurries moving sideways and upward as much as they fell. It was heavy eyelids, and beneath a grey sky it was a big dome packed full of light. Inside it were legs moving quickly over artificial grass. Today regret held me, it shone its light on the things that are most dear and made them feel incredibly tender and pliable and delicate. Today my hands are dry and the water is frozen and feels like a burden on top of everything. How many cycles of freezing and thawing can a person take? I know, even as I ask, that I will take what needs taking.

A contrast and a dream

A day at the Conservatory was followed by a snowfall.

This blog has become somewhat of a dream journal. I have been loosely writing my dreams down for as long as I can remember, but ever since I quit my job in late 2011 I have been religiously keeping track of them. Every night there is something and every day I record it. This has made my dreams, and my capacity to remember them, stronger. Mostly they are just images and surface shapes but sometimes, at least once or twice a month, I dream something that feels compelling and important for me to investigate. This is the latest such dream:

I dreamt that I lived inside of a huge, glass building with another woman. A great storm was coming and the building was expected to fill up with water. This flood was different though… I got the sense that this building was already underwater and that cracks in the surface were now going to let the water in. At first my roommate and I were attempting to seal off our apartment. We had tape and silicone and spent some time making the place waterproof. Just as we were feeling secure a young guy opened our door and shouted at us to follow him and get out. I became frantic. I started yelling at my roommate who was annoyingly calm and cool. I gathered my belongings in panicked armfuls. There was a bulletin board with photos from different parts and ages of my life. I paused in front of it and selected some photos to take with me, knowing somehow that whatever was left in the room would be forgotten and erased from my memories. I was crying and dropping things and knocking things over and begged my roommate to hurry! We finally left and descended down through the building, which was beautiful (like an underwater greenhouse). Somehow, despite the oncoming disaster, there were still people living inside, normal and calm. As we walked down the great staircase I felt myself grow incredibly sad. I took step after step haltingly, my body shaking with sobs and shrieks. I was so loud and disruptive that people stopped to look at me and my roommate grew annoyed and asked me what was wrong. I replied that I was loosing the only place that had ever felt like home.

New Work

I just dropped these pieces off at Gallery 360 today. 

1. The movement of cells bound to light

2. The beginning of light felt like amber

3. Perched on the edge of bloom, color was not separate from sound

4. Such light inside her. It spilled out of her mouth, cutting her words in half

5. The land is a clock and time is the sea and light flows from everything in long angles

6. Waters stretch across the room of my chest

Of course, prints of the new work are available for purchase in the shop.