Exhibition: Angela Lorenz: Collecting to Create, March-July 2016

An exhibition on the artist as collector, Book Arts Gallery, Neilson Library, level 3, through July 31, 2016

Visual artist Angela Lorenz uses found objects, interesting trash, vintage ephemera, and strange “stuff” she has stumbled upon over the years as the raw material and inspiration for some of her artists books and projects. Meticulously organized in over 100 categories, these “research materials,” as she calls them, have served various purposes in the process of creation over the last 25 years. They were initially collected for use in art installations and watercolor paintings during her junior year abroad in Bologna in 1985. The bulk of Lorenz’s “ephemera paintings” were created for private pleasure, rarely exhibited or viewed, while her principal bread and butter consisted of artists books, many of which were acquired by the Mortimer Rare Book Room. This exhibition focuses on several categories of her “research materials,” and relates them to the fully-realized finished work.

Angela Lorenz: Collecting to Create also features the artist’s cartoon character r.ed monde, which first spontaneously appeared in paintings of vegetables in her student apartment kitchen during her year abroad. The digital prints of watercolors exhibited on the walls are selected from a series of paintings that will be used to tell r.ed monde’s birth story and decades-long struggle to be released from the artist’s studio drawer. This magic-realist tale will be published as a 150-page graphic novel titled r.ed engender.ed in a limited edition of 300 copies, with a three-dimensional r.ed figurine attached to the cover. A snippet of text from the graphic novel is presented on the label for each of the twenty-two framed images.

American-born artist Angela Lorenz has made artists books since 1990 in Bologna, Italy, where she moved after receiving a BA in Fine Arts and Semiotics from Brown University. Her course work also included studies at the Rhode Island School of Design in graphics and glass. Lorenz’s books, watercolors, and prints are found in more than 100 museum and university collections in the US and abroad. She also teaches, lectures, and offers critiques of student work at universities and public institutions. She has also exhibited her work in numerous solo and group shows. This is, however, the first time her “research collections” have been presented.

Watercolors by Angela Lorenz

Contact

Sponsored by the Mortimer Rare Book Collection
specialcollections@smith.edu