Louisa is an abstract textile artist and photographer, currently living in Barcelona.
Originally from America, Louisa comes from a long line of artists and has traveled extensively, both of which continually influence her work. Fascinated by textiles as a child, Louisa loved going to fabric shops to look at the spools of ribbons and threads, feeling and collecting different colors and textures. Through her childhood and teens she explored her passion for light and texture through photography, and was inspired by the sculpture of Kiki Smith, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Eva Hesse.
Her degree in fine art was an opportunity to experiment in a wider range of media and to develop ways to integrate alternative photography techniques with textiles. Alongside her degree Louisa worked in galleries, which proved an important part of her training. She matured as an artist as she learnt to visualize each piece as a completed product in context with an audience and a market.
Upon the completion of her degree, Louisa pursued her interest in texture and process by working in ceramic studios and then by doing an 18-month apprenticeship in traditional Mayan weaving in Guatemala. After three more years of travel, exploring art practices in Cuba, New Zealand, and the South Pacific, she returned to coastal Alabama and proceeded to set up a studio, exhibit her work, and start a young artists group. After loosing her home and artwork in the 2004 Hurricane Katrina, Louisa worked for a period as an art teacher and led art therapy workshops with hurricane survivors in her local community.
Although she continues to work with photography, Louisa is currently building a body of sculptural textile work in Barcelona, where she seeks to integrate her weaving and photography background into a sculptural exploration of texture, light, and femininity. She uses craft-based, labor-intensive methods of production, focusing on her materials and referencing the female form. The majority of this work is created using hundreds of pairs of her grandmother's old silk and nylon stockings, or large amounts of simple, natural colored fabrics. Wax, rope, steel, and plaster are normally used as the supplementary materials. She plays with and transgresses the comfortable boundaries by confronting us with the inside and the outside, the living and the dying. Her work is not didactic in that we are not told what to think or how to feel, more we are nudged out of our comfort zone to encounter feminine corporeality in a new and subtle space, a space where repulsion and attraction meet in silence.
text by Tillie Harris
group exhibitions :
"Des de Fora" Punt Multimédia-Casa del Mig . Barcelona, Spain 2007
"Cakewalk" Metåfora . Barcelona, Spain 2006
"Hurricane Katrina" The Idea Factory. Fairhope, Alabama, USA 2005
"A Family of Artists" Eastern Shore Art Center. Fairhope, Alabama, USA 2005
"Is This Art?" Elizabeth Stone Harper Gallery. Clinton, South Carolina, USA 2002
publicity and projects :
-Featured in BCN Weekly. Barcelona, Spain 2007
-Featured In The Mobile Press, The Fairhope Courier, The Baldwin Register. Alabama, USA 2005-2006
-Resident Artist Member, The Idea Factory, Art Cooperative. USA 2005-2006
-Commission work for private collections in New Zealand, Spain, USA, UK.
education:
-BFA, Honors. Presbyterian College . South Carolina, USA. 1998-2002.
Major Focus of Study: Photography . Minor Focus of Study: Art Administration
-Traditional Mayan Backstrap Weaving, Intensive Course. San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala. 2002-2003
-Contemporary Art Workshop, Metafora, Institute of Art and Art Therapy . Barcelona, Spain. 2006-2007
Major Focus of study: Contemporary Textiles . Minor Focus of Study: Art Therapy