Making A Way | Translation
Artists: Linda Bond, Kathy Bruce, Dee Hood, Saskia Krafft, Nathan Margoni, Lake Roberson Newton, TJ Norris, Iviva Olenick, Mandy Cano Villalobos
Statement
Art as an idea and Art as an action. I see my work as straddling these two sources. It is a balance of the mental and the physical, the territory of ideas and the territory of materials and places. At the heart of my work is a desire for a direct engagement with my surroundings in order to create an inventory of experience. It is about being a body in the world and about measuring the world against oneself; and it is less about a precise representation of reality than the formulation of a representation of the world in which I live.
As the COVID virus pandemic took hold of our daily lives, I migrated my artistic practice to a studio-based production. As a result, I was curious to create a project that utilized symbolic forms that define the social, cultural, political and health concerns we now encounter. Plastic gloves are a ubiquitous tool in our fight against this virus. They are seen in all elements of our limited economic and social interactions. In March, I purchased a box of latex gloves from a street vendor in downtown Memphis. I recognized the inherent symbolism of these objects and set out to create a series of photographs that explored their ability to speak of truth, mistruths, trust in public institutions, our personal role in social exchange, and to a greater extent our participation as humans in a broader, global context. The series Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear is an attempt to visually navigate these particular themes and to provide a personalized reaction to such unprecedented times.
Bio
Lake Roberson Newton is an artist and educator based in Memphis, Tennessee. He holds a MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a BA from Rhodes College. As an educator, Lake has taught at numerous institutions including Rhodes College, Memphis College of Art, New Mexico State University, Loyola University Maryland and Southwest Tennessee Community College. Lake’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, with recent shows at Susquehanna Art Museum in Pennsylvania (2020), Masur Museum of Art in Louisiana (2020), Middle Tennessee State University (2020), Texas Woman’s University (2020), Oklahoma State University (2019), Crosstown Arts in Memphis (2019), Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts (2019), Marshall University in West Virginia (2019), and Fort Wayne Museum of Art in Indiana (2018). His work has appeared in numerous online and print journals including Float Magazine, Art Papers, Oxford American, The Sun Magazine, F-Stop Magazine, and Leica Fotographie International. His creative research explores both banal moments and historical contexts, and tests how these can be elevated as signs or signifiers of human existence and communication. The work is generated utilizing the diverse media of digital photography, flatbed scanners, video, drones and sound.
