Lisa MacLean Artist

I have made a video collage documenting some of my site-specific installations in ruined cave houses in the village of Ibrahimpasa, Cappadocia, Turkey, made in March 2009 while an artist in residence at the Babayan Culture House. For more information on this project, click here.

In honour of Halloween this year I am continuing to play with my workshop mannequin shrine …

See more here.

Fun and games with mannequins on the Yellow point peninsula:

I finally had an opportunity to arrange my mannequins on the island this past week. Later in the afternoon, with the beautiful sun just starting to wane in the sky and casting a golden glow over the back of Maggie’s yard, I arranged my plastic people in various configurations next to the trees.

Later on, after dark, in preparation for Halloween, I constructed a shrine inside the workshop, using materials found around the property. I was amazed to see that the Christmas lights coming out of the headless neck of one of the mermaid mannequins actually worked – huzzah!

See more here.

While visiting my friend Lorrill for dinner with Maggie, and taking pictures of her lovely fall garden, I was musing about needing mannequin bodies and, lo and behold,  Lorrill took me next door where she’d seen some mannequins in a neighbour’s garage sale. Wow – major score. I acquired several bodies, one complete with a metal holder in place of its head, a beautiful old-time porcelain juvenile torso (with an optional red hat and blonde fright wig), and many arms, some with hands and some without. These will serve to create an pseudo-octopus and my five painted heads will give completion to the headless torsos. I am already in the planning stages of a Nanaimo mannequin shrine (to appear somewhere in the not-too-distant future).

See more mannequin madness here, here, and here.

I had been musing about moving my mannequins around the city and photographing them, and today, being a beautiful sunny day (and who knows how many more we`ll have), was the day. First, though, I had to take my camera to the park down the street to photograph the vast white mounds of soap suds someone had generated in the fountain there, so large that they looked like icebergs swaying gently in the breeze. After snapping a few pics, I zoomed down to Stanley Park and carried my green plastic garbage bag of heads and painted sticks and my small white plastic bag of dolls down to Third Beach.

I had planned to set them up in the midst of the many small inukshuk stone sculptures that I had seen there on the weekend but when I got there, those were all gone, either knocked down by the waves or by some passerby. Instead, I pushed the sticks into the sand and photographed the heads and dolls against the backdrop of Georgia Strait and the freighters tied up there.  I enjoyed their bright colours against the deep blue of the morning sky.

My next stop was the area between Second and Third Beaches where Mr Stone Master usually has all his large inukshuk totems; here, too, although there had been many on the weekend, they were all gone except one. I arranged the painted heads and dolls in a configuration next to the stone sculpture and documented them. As I was doing this, several people riding bikes stopped to see what I was doing, apparently enjoying the vibrancy of the painted heads, calling them “Whacked“. Next stop on the head tour was English Bay, where they were arranged in a line along a low stone wall bounding the flower beds and in and around a large driftwood stump, much to the delight of local homeless folks gathered on the benches there.

The final stop on the head tour was Granville Island, where I set them up on a large metal sculpture, a metal staircase and in the Creekhouse pond. Here a passerby asked me what I`d done with the bodies and we both started cackling. Back at the ranch, I saw the Davie Duck Whisperer  in the park sans duck but with a cockatiel on her right shoulder. Just another day in the neighbourhood …

See a few pictures here.

“Each epoch not only dreams the next, but also, in dreaming, strives toward the moment of waking. It bears its end in itself and unfolds it – as Hegel already saw – with ruse. In the convulsions of the commodity economy we begin to recognize the monuments of the bourgeoisie as ruins even before they have crumbled.” (Walter Benjamin)

The constellation: a symbol of the relationship which emerges when the historian places a number of apparently unrelated historical events in significant conjuncture. The constellation “links past events among themselves, or else links past to present; its formation stimulates a flash of recognition, a quantum leap in historical understanding.”

(http://www.wbenjamin.org/passageways.html)

20th century German critic and writer Walter Benjamin understands history as a constellation of events rather than a linear progress through unidirectional, homeostatic time. I don’t presume to think that what I’m doing represents a “quantum leap in historical understanding” … but I am exploring Benjamin’s idea of the constellation in this series of work.

“History is a child building a sand-castle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of humanity’s power in the world.” (Heraclitus)

This is another photographic project on which I’m currently working:

See the rest on this page.

Downtown Eastside Vancouver – see a few pictures here.

Some years ago, I acquired some mannequin heads from the University at which I teach; it has a hairdressing program and these are training models.  They have been in hiding for a while and just recently, while cleaning out the storage locker, I remembered them. I decided to amuse myself by arranging the heads on top of driftwood sticks I obtained from the beach beneath the Lion’s Gate Bridge on the Burrard Reserve and painted in various colours.

See more here.

(A few pages from the bookwork)

My bookworks were selected for the 5th International Artist’s Book Triennial by curator Kestutis Vasiliunas.They were exhibited in March 2009 at the Leipzig Book Fair in Germany and at the Gallery “Arka” in Vilnius, Lithuania.

(Curator Kestutis Vasiliunas in Leipzig)

The exhibition will also be hosted at the following venues over the next year:

2009 September 12 – December 13, Art Centre Silkeborg Bad, Silkeborg, Denmark

2010 Spring, Gallery Hübner Bokform, Halmstad, Sweden

2010 May, Seoul International Book Arts Fair, Seoul, Korea

2010 Venice, Italy

Here is the statement from the Art Centre Silkeborg Bad:

“[The exhibition will feature] Artists´ Books collected directly from the international and censored [juried] triennial in Vilnius, which for a number of years has been an important centre for this very special artistic expression, where graphic artists, blandformskunstnere, photographer[s], poets and conceptual artists consider the idea of “books” from different viewpoints. Artist’s books [are] an artistic expression which was developed in the 1960s and enlarge the concept of the traditional book.”

(Exhibition in Leipzig)

And here is the curatorial statement from Kestutis Vasiliunas:

“330 artists from 56 different countries sent their books for the 5th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2009. The jury selected only 131 artists for the exhibition. It is sad and disappointing that so many artists were not included [in] the exhibition. But by organising this jubilee triennial, my purpose pursued was to make it simply the best. Not the best of just “my” triennials but, modestly speaking, at least to ensure that it is the top artistic level in Europe. I would like to thank all the authors who created and sent their books.

The theme of the 5th International Artist’s Book Triennial is Text. If compared with the themes of previous triennials, this theme is as if a step backwards, something more traditional. Probably. But if so, then first of all, that small step is a step towards oneself, towards one’s culture, towards one’s country, its uniqueness, language and writing. It is turning back towards each other, an attempt to establish a contact with [another] human being, irrespective of the country he or she lives in, language he or she speaks, religion he or she believes in. Letters, diaries or poetry expressed in words, images, from the heart. They are the words (In the beginning was the Word, John 1. 1) that acquired “body” from paper, metal, wood or any other material. They are the words that turned into an avalanche of typographic text, calligraphic letters or entirely vanished from the book pages with only punctuation marks, imprints on the paper leaf left.

The 5th Triennial displays the most interesting artist’s books from all over the world. It is the most wonderful experience to see [the] culture, traditions of different countries, [and] art schools reflected in the artists’ books created by the artists. Paper typographic books and books printed by the use of classic graphic techniques: wood engraving, silk-screen printing or lithography; books printed by mixed techniques by combining possibilities of digital printing with drawing, collage and object; concept and handmade embroidered books; books objects, le parello and Flux books. The key role here is played by the idea which materialises in multidimensional forms, and it is absolutely unimportant what means of expression were used in the book. Thus, whether they are “bibliophilic” books or experimental or books objects,  all of them by supplementing each other and contrasting with each other help to reveal miraculous and mysterious world of the artist’s book.

This exhibition is an invitation for dialogue. An invitation to share your “text” with others, an invitation to read the other authors’ words carefully, and to feel his or her soul trembling, heart beating. Thus, please accept this invitation.

Like always we have made the special conceptual catalogue full in colour. The catalogue has modern design, printed on good paper, whose sheets were ripped apart and bound by hand. The catalogue has an edition of 500, all catalogues are numbered.”

Click here to see an excerpt from the catalogue.