Life Stories
Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, Telluride, Colorado
December 14, 2007

Review: Telluride Daily Planet, December 14, 2007

Telluride Gallery Opening Hunter’s "Life Stories" By Susan Viebrock

Lissa Hunter's art will never go out of fashion, because life never goes out of fashion and she makes art about life – hers and ours. Hunter is not a Pop artist, but like the great Pop artists – Warhol's soup cans or Claes Oldenburg's lipstick come to mind – she transforms time-worn clichés into imagery so visually compelling it halts you. In Hunter's idiosyncratic world, tightly coiled vessels wrapped in paper like skin become metaphors for people. We are what we covet. In Hunter's capable hands – and, at Indiana University, she was schooled as a consummate craftsperson/fiber artist as well as a fine artist – a simple and commonly used phrase such as "Empty Nester" is transformed into visual poetry.

"Empty Nester" is the title of one of Hunter’s mixed media works, now on display at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art. The show opens today, Friday, December 14, with an artist’s reception, from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. The artist is in town and scheduled to speak at 6:30 p.m.

“I find the phrase 'Empty Nester' quite poignant. "Life changes for better or for worse when children leave home."

The blue/gray palette of the painted surface suggests the autumn or winter of our lives. Orange tones suggest hope. The dynamic tension within the work is heightened by the delicacy and formal economy of the image of two birds leaving a forlorn tree and the nest itself, which is primitive and rough.

Art critic Harold Rosenberg coined the phrase "the tradition of the new." His theory was that fresh vitality comes from fresh insight, inevitably the contribution of an artist who sees the same set of variables everyone else sees everyday, but from a radically different angle.

Enter Hunter, who spins Rosenberg's insights slightly differently in Abby Johnston's handsome book about her life and work: "The main ability that defines an artist seems to me to be visual acuity," she explains. 'Every sighted person can be educated to use his or her sense of vision more perceptively, but some are born with what may be an overdeveloped capacity for assimilating visual cues. Their responses to the world are based primarily on visual information and take visual forms."

The pure and simple eye appeal of Hunter's work is what grabs us first. We are seduced up front and the hold is so tight, we are in danger of falling in love and maybe missing the point.

The fun really begins when you scratch the surface.

And while we are on the subject, Hunter does just that all the time. Like the artist Cy Twombly, an influence, Hunter often covers her painted surfaces with marks that resemble children’s doodles or graffiti. In any case, these scribbles are indecipherable: "I think introducing actual words into a work of art is a cop out: they are often used when the image isn't enough to convey the artist’s intention. My marks are simply my way of putting a human voice into my work."

Not only the marks, but the architecture of Hunter's pieces is important in understanding what the lady is up to. In Hunter's work, 3D objects rest in special niches or on shelves.

The objects, mostly her signature coiled baskets made of raffia or waxed linen thread, but also now – and newly - snakes and fish, are the actors. Niches with and without doors and shelves are stages on which Hunter's unique brand of theatre is played out. Hunter directs the show. We, her audience, complete the creative process.

Hunter's "productions" always have a leitmotif: she works thematically using a core concept that tends to reveal as much about the artist as her subject. "My work is autobiographical, painfully so. If I could do it otherwise, I would, but I can't." In this show, the unifying idea is the expressions we use to describe other people. "I started out with 60 or 70 phrases. Some I found very interesting, but were hard to make visual. Lots came from literature, others from pop culture."

In "Late Bloomer," the bowls, cups, pitchers, vases arrayed on the top shelf know what they are. "The piece that takes center stage, the one in the middle, had to grow and grow until it finally – and literally – flowered," explained Hunter. The platform for "Late Bloomer" and other works began with a maquette made of foam core, a board that can easily be cut with a knife.

"I make the shape first so I can see the proportions, then send it along to my friend Doug, who used medium density fiberboard to make the support for the baskets. Once the form is back in my hands, I apply a coat of gesso, which then gets plastered with a dry wall compound to make a small surface on which to paint. Once the painting is complete – and painting the part of the process that gives me a stomach ache, because it is hard to know when to stop – the surface is glazed and drawn on," explained the artist.

"But She Is Beautiful On the Inside" is one of the most personal statements in the show. "Growing up, I experienced lots of good things, but I was never a beauty. The use of this phrase is designed to make a person feel better about themselves, but it often has the opposite effect."

When the doors surrounding the central object, a beautiful vase enshrined in a golden altar, are shut, all the viewer sees is a brown, spattered rectangle.

"Snake in the Grass" marks a big departure for Hunter.

'Fish Out of Water' is a variation on the theme of this breakthrough. "In both cases I had to tell myself 'coiling' does not have to mean 'vessel.'

The painted surface of "Snake" is a visual joke: the "grass" itself is comprised of wreathing snakes.

Hunter made her first basket in 1975. Until then, she had defined herself more as a teacher than an artist. In 1979, she moved to South Berwick, Maine, where the community of artists embraced her. In 1980, Hunter had her first one-woman show.