Today we’d like to introduce you to Lea Basile-Lazarus.
Lea, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I’m not sure my story is so unique, but here it is. I grew up in New Jersey and I guess you would say that I’m from the Jersey Shore! Spent my entire youth at the beach and my husband, Mike, and I still go back to Jersey every summer. After I graduated from Trenton State College with my Art Education degree, we moved to the Chicago area in 1976, so that Mike could go to graduate school and I could eventually get my MFA from the School of the Art Institute, which I did in 1981. We never thought we would become Midwesterners, but we never returned home to the east coast. We’ve lived in the Chicago area for 43 years and have lived in Evanston for the past 33 years. Our two boys, now grown, went through the Evanston public schools and then ventured out to colleges on opposite coasts, Vermont and Washington. One is now settled in Seattle and the other in San Francisco.
While at SAIC, I received my MFA with a focus in printmaking. Michael Miller and Ray Martin were two of the amazing instructors that I had while in school there. I was mainly a lithographer at this time, grinding down stones and using litho plates to make multiple colored abstract lithographs. After attending SAIC, I worked at a Chicago Youth Center in Bridgeport for 4 years, establishing relationships with folks that I still have to this day. I was lucky enough to be able to raise my two boys without having to work full time, but while they were young I started a decorative wall painting business and made decorative objects for the home and for personal use, such as, hand painted canvas floorcloths, pillows, purses, and even a line of mixed media jewelry. When my boys were in middle school I started my teaching career, which is still going on. I taught art in middle school, in Winnetka, for 16 years and am currently at Beacon Academy a Montessori HS in Evanston, teaching IB Visual Arts.
About 15 years ago, I started making prints again and have never stopped. I started taking classes at the North Shore Art League in Winnetka, which turned into teaching contemporary printmaking classes at NSAL and Lill Street Art Center. For a significant birthday I received a Conrad Printing Press, which has allowed me to make art in my home studio. Over the past few summers, I have taken classes at Oxbow, the School of the Art Institute’s program in Michigan. Because I did not get into a printmaking class one summer, I signed up for a paper making class with Andrea Peterson, on a friend’s suggestion, and have never looked back. I now go down to Andrea’s home studio, Hook Pottery Paper, and use her facilities to make my handmade paper pulp paintings! I love the idea of the layering of colors, making my own stencils, and working on multiple images at one time. Both the contemporary printmaking and papermaking processes lend themselves to working this way. I am currently busy teaching teenager’s art at Beacon Academy, making prints and paper pulp images, and visiting my grandchildren in Seattle!
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
Short Version: Over the last couple of years, my work has reflected my personal feeling and reactions to the political climate in the United States. I have used photo-lithography and contemporary paper making processes to create my images. These images can be realistic, using photographs that I have taken at marches, or they can become more abstract using colors, shadows, silhouettes, text, shapes, and houses to convey a feeling or thought that I may want to express. The latest body of artwork that I have working on is title, “The Spirit of Community.” Figures and houses seem to be interchangeable, text and shapes become blurred through a frenetic language that I have created, and my color is expressive. Most of these works are paper pulp images.
My artist statement reads:
I have spent the last 18 months creating a body of work that reflects the awareness and power of strength in numbers. People have gathered together to express concern for issues that conflict with our communities’ beliefs and rights. There is a sharp sense of wanting to belong and to be proud of who we are, but also the need to embrace our differences and provide a safe environment in which we all can live.
As reflections of these concerns, expressive figures, text, and symbolic houses have become integral parts of my work. Words weave in and out of my images, sometimes hardly recognizable, other times up front to be read loud and clear. My figures have stepped off the paper and onto the wall, speaking out, not specifically identified, but representing us all. My figures stand united and strong, embodying the depth of concern that is being felt around the world. The house structures might interact with figures or replace them. This shape can symbolize a safe place or an expression of one’s personal identity. These structures also represent people uniting together to become a strong community, a force that seems unbreakable. Yet, this community that appears so strong, can be broken and suffer turmoil within. The frenetic marks that emerge are conversations, are unrest, and are a passionate expression of a desire or belief. The audience will determine the meaning, which becomes individual and personal.
As I have moved through this body of work, I have found that using pigmented paper pulp has been an effective way to express my ideas. Even though I have been a printmaker for many years, I was immediately attracted to the process of making images using contemporary handmade paper techniques. Like printmaking, this process has allowed me to work on several images at one time, moving from one to another, layering different stencils, colors, and ideas. Paper pulp painting is spontaneous; I am actively engaged in the process. My entire body is always moving, from mixing pigments in paper pulp, to cutting stencils, to making marks or writing words with syringes and turkey basters with the gestural movement of my arm. The mental and physical energy it takes to think, move, and react to the images that are emerging is what makes this process so exciting and invigorating. Recently, I have begun removing paper pulp from the wet surface, “tearing” the wet pulp and creating interesting negative space that has added depth to the meaning of the piece. Exploration of these materials and contemporary processes has allowed me to express artistically my feelings about our fundamental needs: to belong and to feel safe.
What do you think it takes to be successful as an artist?
How do I define success…. Personal satisfaction with what you are doing and/or making. I do think about this all the time, would I feel more successful if I sold more art, probably, because then I would be reaching other people and I would know that I had an audience that liked my work. At the end of the day, I need to make art, my hope is that other people can appreciate it and enjoy it, but my need to make it comes from within. I am constantly working, I don’t believe I am trying to perfect anything because I don’t actually think that way, but I am trying to grow as an artist and develop my ideas and concepts in the best way that I can.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
In the next two months, I will be showing in a few places in Evanston:
August 1 – 31 Other Brother Coffee Bar
September 1 – 30th The Evanston Public Library
September 7 – 17th 1100 Florence Gallery
People can support my work by coming to see these exhibits and others that I will have in the future and also purchasing them, if they happen to fall in love with a piece!
Contact Info:
- Address: 1209 Maple Ave
Evanston, Il 60202 - Website: www.leablazarus.com
- Phone: 8477225644
- Email: leablazarus@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lblprint/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lea.lazarus
Image Credit:
I take all my photos of my work
Andrea Peterson has taken the images of me.
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