Alberts, Lisa
Acute Onset no.9 (Quiet House)
Soft Sculpture - linen, light sensitive dye, fiberfil, thread
2021
Lisa Alberts (b. 1983) is a multidisciplinary artist interested in the maternal experience. Lisa received her BFA in Fine Art from Kendall College of Art and Design, followed by graduate work in Photo Theory at Durham University in Durham, UK. She has participated in artist residencies with Stay Home Gallery in Paris, TN, and Empty Room (online). Lisa is a current exhibiting artist with the Farmington Hills Public Art Program and Co-Founder of Skep Space, an artist-centered community for creatives in her community. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Lisa, her partner, and their two children live, work, and play in Farmington Hills, Michigan.
Artist Statement
I use alternative photography techniques to create textiles and soft sculpture that explore the intersection of motherhood and the physicality of caregiving, investigating how the maternal experience feels in the body. Process is central to my work and my children are an inherent part of that process. The act of watching my kids playfully create a sunprint, the act of folding and unfolding fabric, the act of stitching and knotting, are physical representations of ideas I aim to explore in my work. Art and Motherhood are both the knowing and the unknowing, the creation and the healing of wounds, the isolation and the never-aloneness. I like to investigate the duality of this uncertainty amidst repetition.
In my Acute Onset series I give my children nearly free rein to make large sunprints in my studio, which I then sew up and twist into tightly bound knots. Exploring the space where mothering and anxiety meet, these pieces address feelings of uncertainty amidst repetition and explore the weight of anxiety alongside the playfulness of childhood activities such as imagining, gathering, ordering, and archiving.
