ROBERT ROWE

For artist Lisa Nelson Raabe, the process of making art is integral to how she experiences the world and navigates life’s rhythms. “I see the world differently when I am making art.” She says that making art has been a way to process grief, loss and change resulting from the upheavals of the last year. As a long-time yoga instructor and practicing art therapist (MS Art Therapy/Art Education, Illinois State University, 1995) she values creative activity as a part of a healthy, balanced and focused life.

“My work is a process of deciphering what it is to live in our time.” Her process involves the manipulation of materials. “I work with materials to see what they say. The ideas come to the surface after making something.” In a recent series of works she fashioned hollow forms resembling broken-open cocoons or empty husks. Hung on strands and gently moved by currents of air, they allude to metamorphosis and seem to resonate with life that may have departed from those spaces.

While the work begins as deeply personal — perhaps, even, because the work is deeply personal — it becomes universal. This reaffirms something fundamental about making art—that the value of art is not determined by its reception by the public, but by the extent to which it gives insight, pleasure, solace or confidence to the person making it.

Sharing it with others is, of course, an important added benefit. In the last year, Lisa Nelson Raabe has installed three exhibits in the Peoria area. In July of 2020, she mounted a solo exhibit titled “Still Point” that showcased some of her recent large-scale works at the Peoria Art Guild. These works defy traditional categories like painting, drawing, textile or assemblage. Using liquid acrylic polymer she embeds thread or natural material onto large sheets of paper or tulle. In some works she embeds tiny glass beads or materials she calls “studio detritus” — snippets of paper, thread and tape. The resulting surface is deeply layered, somewhat translucent, and both flexible and resilient. Installations range from mounting on the wall to hanging from the ceiling to folding and creating three-dimensional objects. These are objects of meditation and reflection, resonant fields that, rather than reaching out to the viewer, open up and invite us inside to experience the energy between the lines.

Her journey in making art has been a long one. It has gone from crafting intricately woven and beaded objects to being confidently minimalist. Influenced by her study of non-western thought, these large fields of lines have a presence that comes from being at peace with emptiness, impermanence and stillness.

In some of her most recent work, the translucent skin-like material is cut and hangs off delicately curved skeletal armatures, hinting that creation and decomposition are but two aspects of life. In other works, curved forms evoke vessels or boats. Suspended from the ceiling, they gently rock and spin, inviting us on a meditative journey.

For those who could not see the work in person, photographs of these exhibits and more of her work are on her web site at www.LisaNelsonRaabe.com. She will be completing an MFA degree in visual art from Bradley University in December.

Lisa Nelson Raabe, “Enshrine Enshroud,” acrylic Polymer, thread and natural materials on Thai kozo paper. Installation at Hartmann Gallery, Bradley University 2021