Jane Lackey
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Solo and group exhibition venues include the Wellcome Trust, London; I Space, Chicago; Exit Art, NYC; New Mexico Museum of Art; Tang Teaching Museum; Gallery of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs; Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe and the Art Gym, Portland, Oregon. Her artwork has been supported by grants from the Artist Trust in Seattle, the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, Grand Arts, Kansas City and Tamarind Institute with the City of Albuquerque. Artist residencies include Camargo Foundation, France; NEA/La Napoule Foundation, France and the 2011 JUSFC/NEA Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship, Japan. Her work is in the collections of the Detroit Institute of the Arts, Cranbrook Art Museum, Tamarind Institute, Museum of Arts and Design and James A. Michener Collection, Kent State School of Art. She was Professor at Kansas City Art Institute followed by Artist-in-Residence in Fiber at Cranbrook Academy of Art. Lackey lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico since 2009.
ARTWORK
In her current works, Jane Lackey uses meticulous process to orchestrate large-scale, cut paintings on paper that embed the matrix of woven grid into a network of fluid forces. By adding and subtracting adhesive labels, tape, paint, and sometimes thread to the surface of kozo paper, linear intersections seem to parallel language, writing, cognition or measuring. Slightly sculptural surfaces are hung away from the wall casting delicate shadows. One sees both the linear network and through it at the same time. The artwork is a container of fragility and strength that is expressed in the crossing of lines and their shadows as they expand incrementally into spatial topologies. Up close, the porous surfaces never quite settle down. Shadows pulse, casting an ambiguous spatial atmosphere active in formation like an accumulating or dissolving map of particles in motion. As one steps back and away, the mostly gray/black/silver compositions come into sharper focus revealing shapes that express force and interaction. Lackey’s drawing process is one of constant movement of her hands focusing awareness on sensations of breath and vibration that align with our emotional and physical selves. The ambient rhythm of repetition contains difference, anomaly and sameness held within a plaid of connective tissue. Her smaller cut and uncut works on paper use color to further express attributes of layering and tactility. Influenced by the interactive color theory of Joseph Albers, Lackey overlays one painting on another to activate color. One sees two layers at once made of cut paper or cut over uncut paper. The double-layered works are saturated in contrast to the minimal simplicity of single-layer works. The multipart series uses different sizes, proportions and colors to invite close observation and to indicate that what we sense is often hidden, invisible or altered by its context. In Lackey’s work, close observation argues for a greater openness to complexity. Nothing is black and white, we can always stretch our capacity to understand the world around us with greater awareness.
View selected artwork below. For more information click here or call 505-372-7681.
Porta 1, 2020, acrylic paint, ink, hand cut kozo paper, plexiglass hanger,
46 x 36 in.
Porta 3, 2022, acrylic paint, ink, hand cut kozo paper, plexiglass hanger,
46 x 72 in.
Doubling Orange/Red, 2022, acrylic paint, hand cut and layered kozo paper,
20 x 16 in.
Doubling Blue/Lime, 2022, acrylic paint, hand cut and layered kozo paper,
20 x 16 in.
Periphery, 2018, acrylic paint, single layer cut kozo paper,
19 x 13 in.
Doubling Blue/Bismuth Yellow, 2023, acrylic paint, hand cut and
layered kozo paper, 20 x 16 in.
Blue/Sienna, 2020, acrylic paint, hand cut and layered kozo paper,
12 x 21.5 in. (diptych)
Variations 1, 2023, acrylic paint on kozo paper,
14 x 23 in. (17 x 26 in. framed)
Variations 2, 2023, acrylic paint on kozo paper,
14 x 23 in. (17 x 26 in. framed)
Friction 1, 2018, acrylic paint, labels, hand cut kozo paper, wood hanger,
72 x 39 in.
Friction 2, 2018, acrylic paint, labels, hand cut kozo paper, wood hanger,
72 x 39 in.