Opposition /  by Laura J. Lawson

Mars 2461, acrylic ink and marker on polypropylene, 2019

Mars 2461, acrylic ink and marker on polypropylene, 2019

During a tired Sunday doomscroll, an inconspicuous piece of information peeked out from between life-and-death tweets. As it does roughly every two years, Mars will be in opposition on Tuesday. Opposition is the alignment of the Sun, Earth, and Mars. If you’re standing on Earth (and I won’t assume you are), the Sun and Mars are in opposite positions. Tuesday’s opposition brings Mars a mere 62.07 million kilometers from Earth.

I am the dork who shares unsolicited fun facts about space. I’ve witnessed many oppositions; this is just another, right on schedule. Since the last opposition, however, I have tried to understand Mars more intimately. I have traced its geologic features hundreds of times. My studio table is stained with red oxides and icy whites. I enjoy the effort, but I must concede that this is a place that is wholly unknowable to me. It will not be my boot pressing footprints into the surface. I will not be piloting across its terrain in a suit engineered to distribute and hold dear my every breath. I am stuck here.

I am stuck here: a fenced-in United Statesian, doomscrolling on a Sunday, wondering which invisible particles or powers will hurt me first.

Conversely, I am stuck here. I can step outside right now without sweating or shivering. My senses and abilities come from generations of adaptation. I get to smudge rust-colored pigments into images, just like my ancestors, to pass knowledge beyond the life of my body.

I am stuck, but I will step blindly into the night and look for that familiar stranger, staring until my light-addled eyes pick up that soft unblinking blush, a neighborly sixty-two million kilometers away.

J. /  by Laura J. Lawson

The middle initial. Is it pompous? Does it give a melodic number of syllables? Is it better for SEO? Sure. That’s not why I use mine.

Maybe you’ve worked with me before, and I had to politely insist that my J. is included in my name when printed. Here is my explanation.

My name is Laura¹ Jane² Lawson³.

¹Laura, after a close friend of my mother.
²Jane, after Dorothy Jane Lawson, my grandmother.
³Lawson, my father’s last name.

Dorothy Jane Broyles was born on July 19th, 1925 in Callis, Texas, which was 25 miles northeast of McKinney in Collin County. She married my grandfather, Henry Lawson, at age 16. Henry fought in Europe during World War II, and had a long career as a Methodist minister. Together they had three sons, the youngest of which is my father.

Dorothy had many roles: a preacher’s wife, a homemaker, a farmer, a saint (for raising those three boys), a skilled quilter, and generally “artistic.” She took some art classes and made artworks, but I am unsure that she or anyone else definitively called her an Artist, full stop, no buts. Reader, she was.

[These photos are framed under glass, and were taken with a cell phone camera as-is on the wall. I’ll photograph them professionally one day!]

As far as I could tell, she enjoyed her life as it was with no complaints, and she was a wonderful grandmother to me. Even though she was all smiles in my lifetime, I can’t speak for her. If I were a young wife and mother in the 1940s, I would probably be frustrated, scared, angry, tired, and never quite content. It is easy for homemaking to overwhelm even one drawing project.

While there is still much to fight for when it comes to equal rights, I am so relieved to have the freedom to make the choices I have made in my life so far. I’m an artist, a college professor, and an unmarried mother of two cats. Though I have no human children, I am proud that her name and creative legacy continue with my brilliant and wonderful niece, Emma Jane.

Dorothy worked hard in raising her family, tending to farms and livestock, and carving out time for quilts and paintings. I’m proud to have her name, and I hope that by using that name professionally, I can honor her work as an artist.

On defining an artist /  by Laura J. Lawson

This has shown up in my social media a few times during the past several weeks:

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The comments are totally full of stories about people being afraid to call themselves an artist to other people until they’ve hit a certain milestone.

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Just as I sat down to write out my own struggles with artist-identity, I was kindly invited by The Cedars Union to join a panel discussion on this very topic. (Since this event has passed, this post has been edited.) Erica Felicella moderated the discussion between Jeremy Biggers, Melissa Turner Drumm, Hatziel Flores, Riley Holloway, and me.



Here are some pieces from my story.

I have always been a bit of a Hermione Granger. I was good at school, and I have spent years taking comfort and pride in the fact that my GPA was a good reflection of the things I know. I did not major in art in college, and because of that I desperately needed some sort of academic validation when my art career chose me. (The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Potter, and these references are never going away.) My MFA did so much for me in terms of becoming a better artist and actually feeling like one.

This is not a required path to become an artist. I look up to many artists who have no MFA, BFA, or formal art education. What matters is a dedication to one’s practice, and an eagerness to learn from peers and mentors, with or without an expensive document and set of robes.

The really magical bit was how I accepted my path in the first place. I studied abroad in Paris, where I took several art history courses, despite being a Psychology major. Out of all the unsmiling European ID photos I had to take, one in particular changed my life: an unlimited student pass for the Musée du Louvre.

Some of Madame Mandel’s classes met in a little classroom with tiny desks and a noisy projector, but most of the time we gazed upon the topics of her lectures in the flesh, at the Louvre. We would make it through two or three petits galeries in three hours, and after class I would stay. On days off, I returned. On weekends, I went back. Even when rooms were thick with tourists and noise, I wedged myself onto a bench, spellbound. I knew that somehow, I had to be a part of this.

Jardin de Luxembourg, 2009. These are not my flowers.

Jardin de Luxembourg, 2009. These are not my flowers.

There were many times between then and now where being an artist was so hard, I thought it impossible. I worked, I looked for better jobs, and I made terrible paintings in tiny apartments. Even when I thought my work was unshowable, I knew I had to keep making it. To give up art would be like giving up both lungs. Maybe I wasn’t a great artist, but I couldn’t deny that I was one.

Celebrating my life choices in 2016.

Celebrating my life choices in 2016.

Fast forward to today. The number of works I deem fit for consumption is exponentially greater. Rejections roll off my back and motivate me to increase my proposals. I am comfortable in this difficult and competitive field because I have stopped treating it like a competition, and started treating it like what it is: humanity’s creation of culture.

My peers at The Cedars Union have significantly different measuring sticks for what success looks like. If I used their stick, I would fall short, but if they used mine, so would they. We are finding success as artists by being true to ourselves on what we want and who we want to be.

On Exactitude in Science /  by Laura J. Lawson

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On Exactitude in Science
Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley.

…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

—Suarez Miranda, Viajes devarones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658

Process: Marnay /  by Laura J. Lawson

Marnay, 200" x 80", acrylic ink on polypropylene, 2016.

Marnay, 200" x 80", acrylic ink on polypropylene, 2016.

Marnay, the piece pictured above, is one of my "atmospheric view" paintings. Totally abstract, the piece narrates what my summer in Marnay-sur-Seine, France, felt like as an immersive experience. This was a two month artist residency at the Centre d'Art Marnay Art Center (CAMAC).

Each morning, I woke early in my comfortable but cell-like room, crossed the 16th century priory through the library, and greeted the Seine on my walk to the kitchen for breakfast.

My Junes were always sweltering and oppressive, but these mornings were chilly, wet, and quiet. The Seine was murky and impatient, much like my Mississippi back home. Even when the sun reached its zenith, its rays were gentle, warming, and meek.

As the days passed, the Seine's flooding subsided, and river's sediments settled enough to restore the water to jewel-like brilliance. Wildflowers popped up in gardens and in gravel. The sun visited for longer and longer, with impressive sunsets past 9pm.

Everything about this place felt enchanting. The light felt more diffuse and sparkling. The persistent grey sky made every leaf and flower pop like an hallucination. There was nothing rugged or tough about the rural way of life-- even the cows were polite and content.

All of this went into my work. I matched my inks to what I saw-- the changing river, the plants and flowers, the cobblestones and tiles, the soil and sand-- and began to piece together how it feels to be wrapped up in all of these sensations at once.

The lightweight Yupo-- which I bought specifically to be plane-friendly-- was the perfect choice for representing this place. It flutters when viewers walk past it, and there is some hint of an iridescent sheen to it, even when saturated with ink. Compared to my other atmospheric paintings, it is weightless and unabashedly colorful.

This residency had the dépaysement I was looking for. CAMAC gave me the space and time I needed to work with a clear mind, and Marnay-sur-Seine gave me a landscape unlike any I had seen before.

Elements of Place: gallery views /  by Laura J. Lawson

Elements of Place was on view at the Dennis Gallery at Austin College in Sherman, Texas from October 9th - December 8th, 2017.

Austin College press release

The Austin College Art and Art History Department will host the exhibit “Laura J. Lawson: Elements of Place” now to December 8 in the Dennis Gallery of the Forster Art Complex, 1313 N. Richards Street, Sherman. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For additional information, call the Art and Art History Department at 903.813.2048. The exhibit is free and open to the public.

Lawson lived all over Texas growing up and frequent family road trips fueled her love of exploration. While earning a bachelor’s degree from Austin College, her studies took her to Scotland, China, France, Peru, and Ecuador, and she traveled to New Orleans and Chicago after graduation. She earned her MFA from the University of Memphis and spent two months in residency at the Centre d’Art Marnay Art Center (CAMAC) in France. She has since returned to Dallas.

Her residency on the banks of the Seine in Marnay-sur-Seine helped Lawson explore ways of thinking about place. Though nearly 5,000 miles away, the area sometimes reminded her of American towns she knew, including Sherman. Rather than create works about the people and cultures of the places, she was compelled to investigate the physical landscapes, which existed before the places were ever settled. The places are examined in her exhibit through a satellite view, an atmospheric view, and a navigational view.

The satellite-view paintings explore how land and water shape the landscape and form significant relationships for these regions: the Seine is a major artery for France, and the Red River feeds the Mississippi watershed. The atmospheric paintings investigate Lawson’s personal observations of being present in the place. The colors and patterns tie directly to light, water, soil, building materials, wildlife, and other elements that make the area what it is. The navigational view uses regional maps that Lawson has cut into miniature webs of roads. These sculptural drawings highlight years of human effort to make these regions both navigable and livable.

“Ultimately, the physical elements that make up Sherman and Marnay-sur-Seine are the seeds from which their people grew,” Lawson said. “Cultural ways of living can (and should!) cross borders, but the landscape itself can never be truly replicated.”

 

Photography by Mary Cyrus Photography.

Depaysement: gallery views /  by Laura J. Lawson

Dépaysement was on view at the Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art at The University of Memphis from October 21st - November 4th, 2016. 

The University of Memphis press release

Dépaysement is the MFA thesis exhibition featuring the work of Laura J. Lawson. Dépaysement, a French word with no direct English translation, describes the feeling of being out of one's home country. The exhibition addresses her three years in Memphis contrasted with her recent artist residency in Marnay-sur-Seine, France.

Lawson's paintings are made with ink on translucent plastic. The result resembles cartographic endeavors, separating the viewer from each place with an aerial perspective. Her two largest works layer these paintings in front of cut paper maps in a grid formation, creating shadows of highways beneath the landscape-like surface. In other works, Lawson has drawn directly on the painting to mix the universal qualities of topography with the arbitrary shapes of borders and roads. The color palettes of all of these paintings are specifically derived from either Memphis or Marnay-sur-Seine, but the characteristics of these places become lost in the similar and strange elements of geography.

 

Photography by Katherine Stanley Photography.

More notes by the artist on Depaysement

The exhibition was the product of my experiences after three years of study in Memphis, and a two month artist residency at the Centre d'Art Marnay Art Center (CAMAC) in Marnay-sur-Seine, France. I wanted to take a deep look at the concept of the identity of place, and I did so by investigating the landscape through color, pathways, borders, and cartography.

As an undergraduate, I spent a semester in Paris, and gained what I'll call an academic fluency with the French language. (Fluent enough, but not confidently bilingual.) My favorite words to learn were the ones that didn't have an English equivalent. Depaysement. The feeling of not being in one's home country. What is that, exactly?

The odd thing is, by returning to France for the CAMAC residency, I was essentially returning to something familiar. I spoke the language, navigating nearby Paris was already easy for me, and there were few surprises left when it came to cultural differences. Still, the light and air were different, and invisible particles seemed energized in different wavelengths. Time ran at a slightly different speed. Even on days when I felt terrible, I could still delight in how normalcy was never quite normal.

The depaysement in the French countryside reminded me of the almost imperceptible differences that continued to permeate my life in Memphis. Despite moving frequently, most of my youth was spent in Texas. Southern culture covers a huge swath of states, but despite a shared love of BBQ and sno-cones, there were still peripheral and atmospheric qualities that would never be identical.

I really saturated my mind and body in these places. They were a little familiar, a little strange, and had more in common than I could have predicted. It's invigorating to be depaysee, and these questions and memories continue to drive my artistic practice.

Why I married my MFA /  by Laura J. Lawson

I'm sure you've seen it by now: portraits, like mine here, of an overjoyed person batting their eyes at a degree, major project, or job offer. I don't know if it's overdone yet, but I'm in favor of it continuing. I've seen way too many friends and peers quietly accept their masters or doctorate to little fanfare; business as usual, no big deal. 

It IS a big deal. 

Getting any degree is a big deal. Particularly with grad school graduates, it seems to me that they finish, heave a sigh of relief, and resume taking care of the baby, the job, the housework, and life as usual, as if an MBA was on the grocery list.

Great accomplishments deserve celebration. Easy enough; just throw a party. Why marry it?

I do not always adore what I do. I have days where I wished I didn't have this stupid calling, days where I want to go out on the town or binge watch TV without the guilt of needing to get up and work. Acquaintances ask why my "hobby" takes up so much of my time, and I wonder if it's a fight worth picking. But I also have days where I am so grateful to have this thing that brings meaning and joy to my life, even when it's hard or thankless. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. I am and will always be an artist. That's my commitment.

I had a professor say that something like 90% of art graduates don't continue to make work after graduation. I looked for real statistics to cite, but I couldn't even decide what parameters to put on the data. Does it count if you show work without selling it? Does it count if you make work without showing it?

Regardless of what the numbers are for everybody else, I made my goals and remain devoted to them:

  • I will make art.

  • I will show my work.

  • I will be unafraid to push my work to new limits.

My MFA taught me these habits, which is why I wanted cement this relationship as a lifelong commitment.

A major criticism of appropriating marriage to celebrate a vocational milestone is that to some, it undermines the celebration of marriage between people, especially if I want to tie the knot later. No, I didn't have to call it a marriage. A lot of people getting these grad school photo shoots are simply emulating the over-the-top celebration without wearing their hot-glued wedding bands everywhere they go. 

I've thought about this a lot, and this is where my personal priorities lie. I have an amazing partner, and he understands and supports my commitment to art, in part because he's equally committed to music. We labor at our day jobs, and help each other when laboring at our creative jobs. He and I are the kind of people who are not hurt by what art asks of us.

I hope to see others publicize their commitments to what they love, and not just who they love. It's a great opportunity to share how things work in your field, especially if it's different from what your family and friends are used to. What do you love?