Discourse(s) | Video Tours | Printed Matter| Inter(views) | Press
“History may clarify our understanding of the supreme work of art, but can never account for it completely; for the Time of art is not the same as the Time of history.”
“In the dash, thought becomes aware of its fragmentary character. ”
Lisa Blas | Artist Talk
KMD, University of Bergen | Norway | 2017
Lisa Blas : Dawn studio
I began Dawn studio in the early morning hours of 2020, when the pigmented night sky slowly shifts in color and chromatic intensity as the day begins. Dawn is scientifically categorized as astronomical, nautical and civil —graphically represented in shades of blue on a gradient scale before the sun appears over the horizon. Each morning, I wake up before 6:00 a.m. and place my inks, watercolors, paper, brushes and jars of water onto the dining room table. A candle is lit. The city is quiet, the room is compact and faces west over the Hudson River.
Continue reading via Effects Journal
Panel discussions, Artist Talks + Video Tours
Lisa Blas | Artist Talk | MUSEO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO
DE MONTERREY | MEXICO | July 2021
Over the summer, I conducted a painting workshop via Zoom with students in the continuing education department at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico. We used images of sculptures from antiquity to modernism from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA as a departure point to make paintings. Working directly with an artist translator, I worked with students over three days. I also gave a talk on my practice for the education department. My lecture focused specifically on paintings, collages, drawings and installations I've made addressing aspects of the American flag. Many thanks to my interlocutors at MARCO for this kind invitation!
The Print Center’s Jensen Bryan Curator Ksenia Nouril, along with exhibition advisor and exhibiting artist Lisa Blas, will lead a virtual tour of the exhibition “Fit to Print” followed by a Q&A. They will discuss the works in the show, the genesis of the exhibition and touch upon its larger themes. “Fit to Print” is on view at printcenter.org from May 1st to June 30, 2021.
In conjunction with our current online exhibition, Fit to Print, moderator Lisa Blas was in conversation with Alice Centamore, the Paris-based art historian and writer who presented on Simone Forti’s “Newspaper Animations,” and Silvia Benedetti, the New York-based curator and writer who presented on the relationship between the media and artwork of Beatriz González.
Chryssa, Newspaper, Transfer print and pencil on canvas, 104.5 x 120.5 x 1 inches, 1962, The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas
INTERVIEW: Lisa Blas + Ksenia Nouril, Fit to Print, The Print Center Philadelphia
Musée Magazine, Curation: Issue 25, 2021
Art Seminar Group, Baltimore, Maryland
Fit to Print: Artists and the News
Ksenia Nouril, PhD, Jensen Bryan Curator, The Print Center
Lisa Blas, a New York-based artist, will virtually “walkthrough” the group exhibition “Fit to Print” on view at printcenter.org from May 1 - June 30, 2021. The exhibition explores the use of newspapers in art from the post-war era to today. It addresses how artists work with the medium of newsprint as a nexus where the studio, everyday life and current events perennially merge and collide.
Printed Matter
LISA BLAS, Meet Me at the Mason Dixon, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA, 2011
Curator: Shannon Egan, PhD, Director of Schmucker Art Gallery, Gettysburg College
Text: Miguel de Baca, PhD, Senior Program Officer, Connecting Art Histories, The Getty Foundation, Los Angeles
CATALOG
COLLABORATION: A project by Michael Corris, “As We Were Saying”, A compendium of typography
Free Museum of Dallas in Exile, 2020
”Artists and writers living and working in North America and Europe were asked to reflect on the current situation — the pandemic, the continuing struggle for social justice, and the conduct of everyday life — and compose or select an appropriate text. All contributions were composed and presented in the form of a typographic sample sheet. This format is used as a tool by graphic designers to get a sense of the appearance of text when set using a particular type style.”
* View the full project description and work of all contributors here: Free Museum of Dallas in Exile
SOCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY VII : CATALOG
Published: September, 2019
Binding: Perfect-bound Paperback, Pages: 60
Available via Carriage Trade, New York
SPINE : CATALOG
Available via Space Sisters Press, Beacon, NY
Lisa Blas, “Enter Stage Left (Monday’s image, v. 1)”
Broadsheet : Limited Edition of 500
Published 2018
Available via Space Sisters Press, Beacon, NY
FULL TEXT AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD HERE: University of Notre Dame, Snite Museum of Art
PUBLICATION: PUBLIC ART DIALOGUE
Special issue: The Dilemma of Public Art’s Permanence, Volume 6, Number 1 / Spring 2016
Artist project: Lisa Blas, The Instability of Nature Morte (reconsidering monument[ality] under the throwaway evidence of work) 2015 - 2016
(Images found on front cover, back cover, and pages 34, 89, 141)
RESPONSE TO THE NEWS: Adrift (after Charleston), Lisa Blas / June 21, 2015
CATALOG 1 GALERIE COMMUNE produced in conjunction with the exhibition LISA BLAS / Tourner la page, Université de Lille 3, Tourcoing, France / 2011
CATALOG 2 GALERIE COMMUNE produced in conjunction with the exhibition LISA BLAS / Tourner la page, Université de Lille 3, Tourcoing, France / 2011
CATALOG 3 GALERIE COMMUNE produced in conjunction with the exhibition LISA BLAS / Tourner la page, Université de Lille 3, Tourcoing, France / 2011
Inter(views)
INTERVIEW with Ann Landi on the formation of “Monday’s image” RSS feed.
@ Vasari 21
#mondaysimage
Vasari 21
Ann Landi, Founder and Editor-in-chief of Vasari 21, art journalist and writer for ARTnews, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, and Art & Antiques Magazine.
YALE RADIO Interview: Lisa Blas with Brainard Carey
September 7, 2017
“Throughout history, art has been a way for people to connect on an intimate level with what is going on around them. Often during times of political strife or personal distress, artists are at their most fruitful and inspired. Great art often comes from resistance to life and times. Art ripples out from center toward the sea of the wider world creating larger waves of inspiration and action. What may seem unpalatable in its raw state can often be fed to the masses through art.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES Sunday Review
The Constitution by Hand by Morgan O'Hara
June 30, 2017
“SEVERAL HOURS into handwriting the Amendments to the Constitution, I had yet to reach the 19th Amendment, ensuring women’s suffrage rights. The first 10 amendments were ratified in 1789; the 19th, in 1920. In 2017, it is painful to realize that the majority of elected officials at the higher branches of government are still men.”
ARTIST TALK: TRESTLE GALLERY Brooklyn NY / February 9, 2016
ARTIST LECTURE: LISA BLAS at EVERGREEN COLLEGE, in conjunction with the exhibition, Sensations That Announce The Future, Evergreen Gallery, Olympia, Washington, November 10, 2015
INTERVIEW MAGAZINE
How to Make a Scene, or Not by Rachel Small
November 2, 2016
“NAME: Lisa Blas
HOMETOWN: Los Angeles, California
CURRENTLY LIVE: New York, New York
DESCRIBE YOUR PRACTICE IN THREE SENTENCES: I produce medium to large-scale image and text works in collage. The collage material is made from painting sheets of paper in varying color striations and fields, then cutting the paper into abstract fragments or letters and affixing them to vellum and Arches supports. The work creates constellations where the fragility of nature meets civil unrest, across timelines within art history, social history and current events.
ARTISTIC TRAJECTORY: Since graduate school, I have focused steadily on making images that point to our social and cultural landscape, past and present. The study of art and history greatly defines this process. In painting and collage, I work with flat applications of transparent, opaque, or interference color. Throughout, I have collected newspapers and ephemera as research material that has become part of installations, small scale sculptures, projects in photography, and works on paper. My undergraduate education is rooted in history and political science, which explains why notions such as the palimpsest or “constellation,” in Walter Benjamin’s sense, are ever present in my work.
PLAN FOR “DON’T MAKE A SCENE”: An homage to the Belgian artist Guy Mees, and works on paper that channel Corita Kent, still life photography from the 19th century, and recent geographical erasures.
WHAT IS THE NEW YORK SCENE? The scene is always ephemeral, but I am a fan of ad-hoc events, discussions, and gatherings where thinking, engaging, and viewing, can take place impromptu and out loud.
THE LAST SCENE YOU CONSIDERED YOURSELF A PART OF: Brussels, where I lived and worked from 2009 to 2012, and experienced what I have come to define as a double foreignness. This reflected both the anonymity of growing up out west and the ethnic hybridity of my family of origin. Therefore, I recognized something familiar while living in Belgium that I never would have anticipated. Given that I’ve worked in a few different cities before moving to New York in the fall of 2013, each scene has played a part in my projects.
ARE SCENES PASSÉ? Definitely not! A scene is part of the scenery; it’s a backdrop. Everyone belongs to one or many backdrops.
HOW YOU PASSED THE TIME DURING WINTER STORM JONAS: Taking iPhone videos of the New York whiteout from my apartment window, reading my friend Miguel de Baca’s new book, Memory Work: Anne Truitt and Sculpture, and catching up on Sherlock episodes.
CURRENT AND UPCOMING PROJECTS: I produced an artist project for the forthcoming issue of Public Art Dialogue that will be published this spring, and I’m collaborating with another artist on a four-person exhibition based on the notion of correspondence.”
STUDIO VISIT: ELIZABETH FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS New York City / 2014
INTERVIEW: Lisa Blas interviews Anne Ferran for THE STUDIO VISIT
Metonymy and memory in the work of Australian photographer, Anne Ferran.
Sydney, Australia / July 2012
SLOUGHT FOUNDATION PHILADELPHIA
Lisa Blas in Conversation with Thierry de Duve
and Jean-Michel Rabaté
September 6, 2011
Meet me at the Mason Dixon Line: a conversation about artistic practice and complex geographies of disunion, war, and reconciliation
Slought is pleased to announce "Meet me at the Mason Dixon," a conversation on Tuesday, September 6, 2011 from 6:30-8pm between artist Lisa Blas and art historian Thierry de Duve. The event will be introduced by Jean-Michel Rabaté and takes place on the occasion of the Sesquicentennial Commemoration of the Civil War.
Since the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the "Mason's and Dixon's Line" has functioned and symbolized as a legal and cultural boundary between the Northeastern United States and the Southern United States, and has been often associated with questions concerning the legality and legacy of slavery. Today, what does it mean to speak about this divide, and to situate one's artistic or art historical practice within this complex geography of disunion, total war, and reconciliation? Although the Civil War technically ended in 1865 with the cessation of fighting, for many the unresolved tensions between the North and South persist, and the political and social challenges of reconstruction are still unresolved.
With these considerations in mind, this conversation will consider questions such as: In what sense can one say that the Civil War ever ended? Does anything historic ever end? What does it mean to address history in the twenty-first century, and who is one addressing in that regard? What is the function of a confederate or union monument? What does it mean to re-visit the American Civil War era today, not as a historian but as an artist?
This event has been organized on the occasion of Lisa Blas's installation at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, PA (on view through October 7, 2011), which features images and objects from museum archives that have been excavated for their narratives about the American nineteenth century. Research and travel to locations such as Antietam National Battlefield, the Gettysburg National Military Park, the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia have served as departure points for Blas's investigations into national identity, cultural myths, and American history.
PUBLIC / PRIVATE
Lisa Blas in conversation with Jeffry Cudlin
2009
D.C. artist Lisa Blas discusses her recent public art project PUBLIC / PRIVATE and K-Street Projects, v.1-4 with Jeffry Cudlin, Arlington Arts Center Director of Exhibitions, Arlington, Virginia / 2009
Press
The Brooklyn Rail: “Spine” by Megan N. Liberty
The Sentinel: Art Ejecta Projects emerges in Downtown Carlisle by Joseph and Barrie Ann George
ARTNET DAILY PIC Lisa Blas finds Twins for the 'Times', for Our Times by Blake Gopnik published in Opinion
April 7, 2017 / New York
NOW BE HERE #2 NYC
by Kim Schoenstadt
October 23, 2016
Now Be Here #2, NYC (2016) photo by Paola Kudacki, courtesy Kim Schoenstadt, Shinique Smith, and The Brooklyn Museum
Link to participants: “Now Be Here #2, NYC”
On Sunday October 23, 2016, six hundred New York female and female-identifying contemporary artists gathered in the Brooklyn Museum's historic Beaux-Arts Court for the largest group portrait of artists ever taken in New York.
REVIEW CAPITAL ART TOURS After Lost Space(s) an Exhibition by Lisa Blas, at Kai Matsumiya Gallery by Lisa Lipinski
April 17, 2016 / New York
REVIEW THE FORUM Lisa Blas: Meet me at the Mason Dixon Kicks Off 150th Commemoration of the Civil War by Emily Francisco, September 16 ,2011
CATALOG: SCHMUCKER ART GALLERY produced in conjunction with the exhibition LISA BLAS / Meet Me at the Mason Dixon 2011Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA
PRESS RELEASE ROSSICONTEMPORARY Still Lifes, Sometimes Repeated by Lisa Blas, Brussels, BE / 2012-13
REVIEW HART Still Lifes, Sometimes Repeating by Colette Dubois / January, 2013
REVIEW LA LIBRE BELGIQUE Les Fleurs de Lisa Blas by Roger Turine / 2011
