Life floods
Rivers appear to take over yet keep moving
Eddies stir in us…. absorbing the darkness
Breath intervenes
A crack is found
Light comes through carving space
Veins imbued with hope, fill with love
Light and darkness marinate
tremble……. shake ………. stir
Shed
Strength brings forth
a beam
Light turns into tangible threads
I weave these threads
- Dana Lynn Louis
This exhibition was in process for two years and is a combination of my work abroad at Thread, an artist’s residency in Senegal, West Africa, and Gather:Make:Shelter, a citywide creative collaborative in Portland, OR. Both projects aim to enrich the lives of those in their community through creative practice and artistic pursuits with a focus on collaboration, engagement, skill-building, and connection. All of this work is related as I weave together life and work, which is a direct response to the energetic ties between all of us, thus lessening the miles between us conceptually and physically. It is increasingly important to me that all of my work, no matter its form, moves towards light, weaving us together and creating levity and beauty along the way.
Selected images from a solo exhibition at Friesen Gallery.
Curator Courtney Gilbert invited me to create two site specific installations at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts as part of the Contemplative Practice Exhibition 2017. Included in this exhibition was the second incarnation of the envelope project (first was at the Hoffman Gallery in Portland, Oregon) which solicited things participants wanted to clear. During a ceremony at the exhibition the envelopes were burned and the mica circle remnants remained as a collective memory of everyone’s intentions for clarity both personally and globally.
As one of eight artists in the 2016 Contemporary Northwest Art Awards exhibition at the Portland Art Museum I created three site-specific installations: Oscillation, Clearing, and Filament.
A mixed media installation of digitally embedded photography as well as mixed media sculpture, which is based in acts of drawing and seeks to transport viewers to new mental and physical landscapes as they move amongst the work.