Lisa Reinauer, 3-time TASIMJAE winner, ‘makes art’ for May exhibit
Lisa Reinauer at work in her Lake Charles, La. studio. Photo by Meghan Fleming
As people, we generally live in multiple identities. We have our home life, our identity as friend, spouse, love, parent and so on. We also live in professional identity and, more specifically, what we do that makes us who we are.
TASIMJAE 2018 winner Lisa Reinauer is no stranger to this polychotomy of identities of artist, teacher and interpreter of texture, composition and metaphor. As a three-time winner, her experience broadens the knowledge for all that come into her world.
“My history with The Art Studio goes back to 1992, and I treasure the many friendships formed and experiences shared around its existence,” Reinauer said in an email interview. “I look forward to the TASIMJAE exhibit each year and constantly encourage both students and colleagues from Louisiana to enter and engage with our art cousins to the west.”
Her solo exhibition, “Allegories, Symbolism, Metaphor & Light,” which opens May 4, is a continuation of her relationship with The Studio and the development of her work and ideas. An additional caveat to her wisdom is that 2019’s TASIMJAE winner, Sajeela Siddiq, is a colleague and protégé of Reinauer.
“I was visiting Sajeela in her studio about two months ago and urged her to enter work in the exhibit,” she said. “I told her, ‘First prize is a one-person show. Wouldn’t it be great to have the goal this year of an exhibit to fill? She entered and won.”
Reinauer, professor of art at McNeese University, began her 28th year teaching this spring and is compelled by both the classroom and the studio.
“Most artists would prefer spending their time in the studio making work,” she said. “When students speak of all the things of life competing for their time, I often respond, ‘One day you will wish for someone to tell you that you must go into that studio for the next two and a half hours and draw.’ So, studio time is precious — but we have to exit the cocoon of the space from time to time and place our work along with others to look and to consider and study.”
Reinauer said the same may be said about visiting museums, exhibits, and street art fairs in the region. Whatever feeds a person’s creative self must be nurtured.
“I believe it was Kiki Smith who likened exhibitions to little utopias we can create,” Reinauer said.
“Allegories” is the newest exit from the cocoon for Reinauer beginning in 2015 with her “Sticks and Stones” series.
“This series grew directly from the last show at The Art Studio in 2014, an exhibit composed of diptychs, mostly smaller works in both acrylic and encaustic,” she said. “There was an image with a small twig paired with an abstraction of rings. That image brought me back to nature as subject matter.”
Her images are acrylic on canvas, and Reinauer said the imagery is both collected and found, adding that her studio is a repository of materials, sticks and other matter.
“I may arrange and photograph to capture a particular type of light and character of shadow,” she said. “Other times, nature presents itself, as when an unexpected tree removal literally dumped 11 tons of subject matter on my front lawn last fall.
“Still-life painting has a long history of serving as a vehicle for symbolism and meaning. The Vanitas painters used certain subject matter to represent to the viewer of the fragility of life. Combining interests in allegorical imagery with a love for painting nature, color, and light led to this series.
“The process of painting is meditative for me, and these images are intended to invite the same. There is gesture is the way branches fall or are felled by wind, water, or chainsaw; ends may be broken, torn, severed, or burned.”
Lisa Reinauer will present her exhibition, “Allegories, Symbolism, Metaphor & Light,” at the Art Studio, begining May 4. Photo by Meghan Fleming
Reinauer said the “sticks and stones” adage appears in the Cambridge Idioms Dictionary with the following note, “Something that you say which means that people cannot hurt you with bad things they say or write about you.”
Viewers can refer to her work, current and previous, on her website www.lisareinauer.com for the larger series.
“If ever there was a time or society in which language is used to cast stones and create fracture, the present is evident,” she said. “Answering to the vitriolic noise of the 24-hour news cycle is the quiet of this art — large canvas textural fields invite contemplation within the structural fabric of nature.
“The act of painting — of art making — is something I experience as a meditative process. Getting lost within the patterns of color, texture, and light allows for stillness within the chaos. The images may be first absorbed as studies in light, and an aesthetic response speaks to my interests as a colorist and painter. Within the sometimes seemingly disordered arrangements are also purposeful symbolic compositional decisions.”
Reinauer brings this sense of art making to not only her own work but to her teaching environment.
“Teaching is as much a part of my identity as is making art — the two are inseparable at times,” she said. “I am fortunate in that I teach mostly foundations, including color theory. While the students explore each concept within the necessary constraints of projects, there is not a theory taught which I do not actively employ with every painting.”
Teaching art, Reinauer said, should come from a place of knowledge, practice, and caring. All of her art studio courses fall under the larger umbrella of general education at McNeese and means course student composition may be equally major and non-major.
“This does not impact the rigor of the course, however, my approach must take into account the first-time art student who may have never drawn or painted or been exposed to art history,” she said. “Not all students learn in the same manner, so I am mindful to approach all concepts through lecture, reading, and demonstration.
“Art can be a powerful bridge in learning, no matter the content. Students come into the subject with various abilities, challenges, language barriers, and backgrounds — art is often where the learning field broadens rather than narrows, is more inclusive than exclusive, and invites conversations between people with radically different perspectives.”
Reinauer said course content remains the center of a given course and that affords the opportunity to help students find different pathways to expression and understanding art.
“My beginning drawing class started their final drawing this morning, and I have been moving around the studio as each faces their ‘giant’ blank sheet of Rives BFK before a challenging still-life,” she said. “By the end of class, each has overcome any initial hesitancy and at least loosely established a composition.”
Reinauer emphasizes her awareness, knowing that most are not art majors, and finishes the thought with a wry, “yet.”
“Entering exhibitions is something I encourage among my students from the first term,” she said. “Student exhibitions are great first steps to learn about everything – from selection to presentation to installation. This actually begins with foundation students as I have them mount work for critique. It is important on so many levels.”
The opening reception for “Allegories, Symbolism, Metaphor & Light” is May 4 at 7 p.m., at 720 Franklin in downtown Beaumont.
For more information, visit www.artstudio.org or call 409-838-5393.
Story by Stephan Malick, ISSUE staff writer