Lisa Blas

Lost punctuation, Flag v. 2

2018
Acrylic and interference color on watercolor paper, on Opalux vellum
19.5 x 25.5 inches
https://www.lisablas.com

< Artists + Writers

Lisa Blas, from Los Angeles, lives and works in 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.

– Rachel Small, “How to Make a Scene, or Not,” Interview Magazine, November 2, 2016