PASSING RADIANCE
Form+Content Gallery presents Passing Radiance, a solo exhibition of new large-scale oil stick drawings by Joyce Lyon. In this work, Lyon focuses on the intersection of place, memory and the passage of light as metaphor for understanding and communicating experience. She is interested in the fragile and essential ways by which meaning is conveyed and in the resonant relationship between silence and what can be understood.
Artist’s Statement
My spiritual practice is to walk in places where nature is allowed to assert itself. Knowing the land holds stories, I pay attention. Each experience provokes a meditation on nature’s transitory beauty, the power of light and our vulnerability / responsibility.
In this body of work there are drawings of an ancient Roman path, of a North Carolina woods seen through the warped lens of old French doors and of the area below the Old Cedar Avenue bridge in Minneapolis, historically Dakota homeland, during spring flood.
Thoughts about nature’s power to amaze, about knowing a place intimately through eyes and feet, about light, time and history, are active as I walk and as I work. I work in retrospect, in the studio, my resources experience, memory, photographic reminders, and the gestures of my arm. I am using oil sticks, which are thick and somewhat awkward. I feel each mark as I lay it down. People tell me the work is beautiful, not an easy beauty but one that includes the ephemeral qualities of light, the ravages of time and effects of human misuse or inattention. They also tell me they use my work to ignite their memories, to revisit their own experiences, to restore inner equilibrium. In order to engage in saving our wild places and the multiple ways in which they are crucial, we need awe and pleasure alive within us, to sustain us in continuing what we need to do.
Artist’s Biography
Joyce Lyon uses drawing and digital imagery / artist’s books to address issues of identity, history and ageing from a personal and female perspective. Recent exhibitions include Crosby Farm Park – Autumn (Groveland Gallery, Minneapolis), Some Pages for a Book of Hours (Form+Content Gallery) and Shifting Perspectives: Dialogue in Place (University of Leeds, England). In support of her work she has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Her work is in public and private collections internationally. She was a founding member of WARM: Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota and of Healing Place, and is Associate Professor of Art emerita at the University of Minnesota.
Press Images For high resolution images, please contact lyonx001@umn.ed
Exhibition Dates: March 04 - April 24, 2021
Open by appointment : Thursday,Friday, Saturday, 1:00 – 5:00 pm
To make an appointment, please email the gallery giving the date and time frame that you anticipate visiting the Gallery.
Your appointment will be confirmed via email: formandcontent@gmail
Virtual Artist’s Talk
Wednesday, March 24, 7:00 CST
A virtual "tour" of the exhibition with Joyce Lyon will include an opportunity for questions. The talk will be about one hour long. To sign up for this Virtual Artist's Talk and receive an invitation link, please email formandcontent@gmail.com by 12 noon on March 24
/passingradiance
