The SF Bay Periphery Project — The Artwork of Lisa Kairos
Ongoing for several years now, the artist surveys the bay environment for this important body of work
I’m always fascinated about how artists are so willing, sometimes hunger to constantly evolve their creative process, seeking to engage in some internal and/or external activity on some regular basis to challenge their perceptions, beliefs and worldview. We all do the same, regardless of our vocation or position. If we’re mindful enough there’s a constant reevaluation of who we are and what we do and how we manifest this evolution into the work we do. For many artists this process of inquiry and growth is essential to their work.
Lisa Kairos is on a journey — walking more than 300 miles along the San Francisco Bay Trail, sketching and taking photos along the way as part of her Periphery Project, with some of the resulting artwork exhibited through September 15th at Hang Art in San Francisco. Those who dwell in metropolitan areas today are often sheltered, distanced, or cut off from primary sources of the local environment. Lisa says, “The perimeter of the San Francisco Bay is a charged outline of a place, of an object at the geographical center of our lives here in the Bay Area… the bay itself.”
The bay is where she says, “earth, water and sky meet, where development meets conservation, where the evidence of the past is there,” if you stop long enough to look closely. By navigating the edge of the bay and recording each walk with GPS, Kairos says the walk itself becomes a kind of document, a physical/spatial drawing. “I am taking the visual influences from these walks into my studio and developing a new series of works based on the shapes, colors, lines and the atmosphere of the bay perimeter.”
Lisa started the project in February 2015.
As I walk, I do sketches and take photographs of the bay and the shoreline, and post these photos on Instagram. “The last few weeks, I finished walking the stretch of South San Francisco shoreline and started back at Hwy 92, heading south from there. I might walk for miles, I might lay on the earth, I might sit in the rain or fog. I ask questions: How does our perception of a place build and/or fade with familiarity? What is the native structure and feel of the place, and how does that change over time, with human intervention, with seasons, with weather? How can I convey the feeling of a place?
She shares with readers online; “I’m still fumbling around in the studio, establishing my parameters with new work, and learning how these walks are influencing my painting and drawing, shifting the work towards a new visual vocabulary.” You can find Lisa’s photos and comments on Instagram @lkairos.
I wondered if Lisa used any of the images or sketches in the finished artwork? “The sketches and photographs don’t become part of the artwork,” but she says, “they are the subject matter for my paintings, they do influence my compositions and color choices and at times certain shapes or geometries from my photos will make their way into paintings. The act of walking itself serves as a physical tracing, or drawing, of the bay.”
“This work definitely represents a departure,” Lisa says, in response to a question about whether it’s yet become clear how Peripheral Views may have informed her creative process or changed the nature of her work. “If you were to look at my pre-2015 work next to this new group, they are quite different. I think this new work has a lightness and openness that was not always in the previous work, and I’m incorporating transparent shades of blue in response to the new environment.” There are other new visual references in her work as well…for instance, “the curved dotted lines are from nautical charts showing soundings of the bay, and I’ve been using drawings I’ve made of reflections. There is so much light bouncing off surfaces when you look at the bay, that it is really affecting what the work looks like.”
Kairos’ work questions conventional notions about time and place, journeys and destinations, at the same time drawing the viewer in to make their own inquiry. Looking at the work, the viewer immediately sees a minimalist aesthetic of floating space and that sense of incredible light, with the overlay of shapes and markings that might suggest a map, if so, one with no particular direction, a non-cartesian grid; one that doesn’t give you the directions or tell you how to get there, or when you’ve arrived. Working in encaustics, Kairos carefully creates layer upon layer, her mediums allowing for transparency, with a wonderful ability to communicate the feeling of multiple moments, multiple views, memories and abstracted perceptions.
About the art included in the project, Lisa says:
“I am looking for patterns of interaction between land, water, atmosphere, light, and human structures and interventions. From this, I create multi-layered, meticulous, abstracted landscapes using materials that transmit or reflect light. My visual vocabulary corresponds with elements in the landscape, such as horizon, light, reflection, color, line of sight, precipitation, cloud formation, landworks, structures, multiple perspectives, arc of sky, and depth of field. The works sometimes borrow the visual syntax of maps and nautical charts. Decentralized imagery creates a sense of floating space and upended orientation. Instead of describing a specific moment or view, these paintings depict fluid space, repetitive perception, and accumulation of observation and memory.”
I asked Lisa if the Periphery Project was making a conscious statement about the environment?
“I don’t think the work is necessarily about the environment, nor does it make personal judgments about right or wrong, or to affect change. But I do feel that the environment has become marginalized and this work might encourage people to look a little more closely.”
Lisa’s goal is to walk the entire 300+ mile route of the San Francisco Bay Trail. And we’ll all get to benefit from the documentation of her journey, her body of work.
Visit Lisa’s website for more artwork and information about her work: http://www.lisakairos.com.
Thanks for reading my work — I am doing this to spread the word about local artists and my own development as an artist and a writer about the arts. If you would like to make a small donation in support of this effort please visit this link, and thank you for reading!
