Ballpoint pen » Lora Jost, Artist

Blog 5: Poetic Language

Gallery view, *Sound the Climate Alarm*, 2020

This is the fifth and last in a series of blogs about my current exhibit, Sound the Climate Alarm, on display at the Lawrence Arts Center now through Dec. 21, 2020. Here are links to the first four:

Blog 1: Artist Statement: Sound the Climate Alarm

Blog 2: Roots of Sound the Climate Alarm

Blog 3: Symbols and Themes

Blog 4: Making Art in Covid-times

Poetic Language

Sound the Climate Alarm is, in broad terms, my response to climate change, animal extinction, barriers, border walls, and the pandemic. I was happy to discover the writer and poet Mathew Zapruderâ€™s description of how he views the language of poetry, because I think it is a helpful way to think about the images in my exhibit, too.

Zapruder talks about poetry as â€œlanguage freed from utility.â€ He says poetry is how we â€œget to the truth that is beyond our ability to articulate.â€ So where, in my drawings, chickadees sing razor wire, thereâ€™s a cardinal honking, or a paper boat is lit on fire, I think these are the kinds of images Zapruder was talking about, intended to â€œproduce an effect in us, rather than to communicate information.â€

So, while I am working with specific themes in my art, my images are intended less to communicate information than to evoke impressions, inspire imagination, and spark concern.

Installation of paper crane drawings, Lawrence Arts Center, 2020

Visit my exhibit in-person at the Lawrence Arts Center, now through Dec. 21, 2020. Original art and artist prints, suitable as gifts, are available for purchase. Hours are M-Th 9am-9pm, F-Sa 9am-7pm, and Su 1:30-7:30 pm. As Covid-19 rages on, the Arts Center is pretty low-key these days and it is likely that during a random visit to my exhibit you may find yourself alone in the space. If you would prefer a virtual tour, scroll down the page at this link, courtesy of the Lawrence Arts Center.

Artist prints are on sale in the gallery

Exhibit: Carriage Factory Gallery, Newton, KS

Exhibit announcement

I am excited to have an exhibit of mosaics, scratchboard, and drawings at the Carriage Factory Gallery in Newton, Kansas! The exhibit runs July 27 – September 20, and is located at 128 E. 6th St., near downtown Newton. Gallery hours: T-FÂ 12-5pm,Â Sa 10am-5pm.

I am exhibiting my art along with two others, Rachel Epp Buller and Emily Willis Schroeder. The title for our collective exhibit is, Our Lives. Past. Present. Future. My portion of the exhibit is called, “Sound the Climate Alarm,” and my artist statement follows:

Sound the Climate Alarm

In my exhibit of drawings and mosaics, cardinals honk and chickadees sing razor wire. Death chases a prairie chicken with a blaring saxophone. Animals, drawn from memory, reveal the loss we find when we are without them. Origami cranes, an international symbol for peace, fly over walls and meander through chain link fences. And yet, archways that imply the presence of barriers also show a way to pass through them. The cardinalâ€™s song is visually amplified as a message of hope and renewal. A car with loudspeakers on top blasts an unusual wish for the world. With a sense of beauty and compassion, through images that visualize sounds that are both real and imagined, my work â€œsounds the alarmâ€ on climate change, animal extinction, and other urgent concerns, encouraging the viewer to â€œlistenâ€ with an open heart towards creating a future where there is enough to share and compassion for all.

Links:

Exhibit announcement in The Newton Kansan

Facebook invitation to exhibit opening

Carriage Factory Gallery website

Fire and Flood in the 12×12 National Juried Exhibition

Fire

2017

Bic and Schneider ballpoint pens

12″ x 12″

Flood

2017

Bic ballpoint pen, UniBall pen

12″ x 12″

Both “Fire” and “Flood” are in the 12×12 National Juried Exhibition at the Lawrence Arts Center through December 23, 2017. Come check it out.

Crossing The Line, Harrisonburg, VA

“Does This Make Sense” is a drawing I made for the recent exhibit Crossing The Line, at the Margaret Martin Gehman Art Gallery, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA.

The exhibit was curated by Rachel Epp Buller, who also provided the installation photos below. The exhibit brochure and blog explains the impetus for the exhibit and work:

“The conference during which this exhibition takes place, Crossing the Line: Women of Anabaptist Traditions Cross Borders and Boundaries, invited presenters to consider border and boundary crossings in terms of ethnic and religious heritage, gender and sexual identity, geographic borders, private and public spaces, or disciplinary expression. The artists included in this exhibition most often cross lines in order to experiment and question, to make statements, or to think back through time.”

Artists in the exhibit included: Teresa Braun, Jen Dyck, Kandis Friesen, Jayne Holsinger, Jerry Holsopple, Mary Lou Weaver Houser, Gesine Janzen, Lora Jost, Audra Miller, Jennifer Miller, Teresa Pankratz, Jessie Pohl, and Karen Reimer.

Does This Make Sense?

“Does This Make Sense?” is a ballpoint pen drawing on clayboard (18″ x 14″) that I recently completed for an exhibition in conjunction with next summer’s conference,Â Crossing the Line: Women of Anabaptist Traditions Encounter Borders and Boundaries, at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA, June 22-25, 2017. Rachel Epp Buller, Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Design at Bethel College in N. Newton, KS, will curate the exhibit.

Artist Statement

This pieceÂ includes words that have personal meaning for me about critical thinking. Borders between cultures, between different ways of thinking, between different sets of values, even between groups within a shared culture offer both a dividing line and, if we can look across these borders, the possibility of thinking critically about the ideas on each side of the line. And I am of course never fully on one side of the line or the other at any given time; these borders are permeable. Who I am is formed out of ideas and values from my Mennonite heritage and from my experiences and commitments in the wider world. When I think across borders I often find myself asking the important age-old question, â€œDoes this make sense?â€ By looking both ways, I find new ways to engage my commitment to decency and peace.

“The Toll” at the Lawrence Arts Center through Oct 22, 2016

“The Toll” is a ballpoint pen drawing, 22″ x 30″, that I made for the exhibit “Currently Nontraditional” at the Lawrence Arts Center through Oct. 22, 2016. The exhibit includes works on paper by 12 artists, each responding to some aspect of what 2016 has meant to them.

Artist Statement about “The Toll”

2016 has been a year of violence, mass shootings (including one in Hesston, Kansas, near my hometown), terrorism and war. To depict the pain of 2016, I drew many individual paper cranes as the overall pattern in my drawing. Most cranes are marked, wounded or shot, crumpling and falling to the ground. A few shots miss and a few cranes survive. The paper crane became a symbol for international peace after Sadako Sasaki, a Japanese girl who was a victim of radiation sickness from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, attempted to fold a thousand paper cranes before she died. My drawing is about the fragility of peace and the toll of violence, with an awareness that every person killed in a mass attack, is an individual who was loved and will be missed.

Kansas People’s History Project

Here’s a poster I made for the Kansas People’s History Project coordinated by artist Dave Loewenstein.Â My poster celebrates the peace vigils sponsored by the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice (LCPJ), in Lawrence, Kansas, calling for peace in Iraq and Afghanistan. The LCPJ is a community organization that began in the 1970’s to promote education and action for a just world, free of war. Look at the entire poster gallery here.Â More posters will be added as they are submitted.

11″ x 17″, ballpoint pen