Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Lauren Semivan
The work of Lawrence graduate and professional photgrapher Lauren Semivan is a layering of contradictions. Her images create sensations of electricity and decay, hope and helplessness, elegance and chaos, illusion and candidness. Scribbled lines and tangled wires against billowing curtains and wispy, cloud-like surfaces. The woman (the artist) appearing in many of the photos is identity-less, windswept, deep in focus seemingly holding onto whatever is in her reach. The found objects arranged in her sculptural compositions are vintage, organic and rustic.
Semivan feels that she needs to live in location that is nurturing to her creative process and artistic endeavors. Neither the thoughts of working three jobs to rent a closet home in New York city or living in a suburban apartment with two cats, a TV and air conditioning are appealing to her. Both her and her husband value self-sufficiency and living in flux rather than reclining to a comfortable boredom.
Her work is highly deliberate, personal and purist and execution. She creates all of her images using an early 20th century 8x10" view camera. All of the surrealist qualities of Semivan's work are created by manipulation of physical space rather than of photo, camera or other means of technology.
According to Semivan "Within each image, ghosts of previous drawings create a sense of time suspended, evoking gesture, atmosphere and memory. Photographs allow me to access the extraordinary, to keep a record of dreams, and to employ the unknown."
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From her visit, I feel that one of the most important things she pointed out was how she "feels that she needs to live in location that is nurturing to her creative process and artistic endeavors." The story of how she found her environment in Alaska and how she used it to be part of her art was truly interesting because of the process and how it included nature and scraps from the sea. Making her environment her art, she really mirrors what it means to see art all around you; she has mastered the ability to pick it out and expose it for us.
ReplyDeleteI loved that you noticed the opposites and contradictions in her photographs. Those ideas were picking at my brain too, but I didn't know how to phrase them. I agree that she is deliberate in the work she creates, as well as how she uses the space within her reach rather than the space on a computer screen.
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