Conrad Wilde Gallery presents artist Lucinda Young

Lucinda Young – Artist Statement

As a visual artist with an academic background in literature and cultural studies, the connections between verbal and visual language – pictographs, hieroglyphics, ideograms, calligraphy - continue to influence my work profoundly. As an only child raised in South East Asia in somewhat isolated circumstances, I invented imaginary languages. The way I work today continues to evoke that sense of inventing a language to communicate an intuited "truth," a truth only partially understood and largely imagined or invented. I read voraciously and indiscriminately. I love to travel and references to cartography often figure in my work, as do diagrammatic structures which evoke organic, anatomical, astronomical and geological systems. Theology, across the entire spectrum of the world’s religious and philosophical traditions, is foundational for me. My work frequently questions what it might mean in contemporary, secular culture to think of art as a form for meditation or prayer. Western medieval art and classic Chinese and Japanese are significant points of reference as are ancient codices and the literary, epistolary and visual narrative traditions associated with the history of pilgrimage.

A new body of work is often triggered by chance - a nugget of new and intriguing information, a photo in a newspaper, a conversation overheard. Being an associative thinker, I embark on wide ranging research and accumulate an extensive vocabulary of new shapes and images. As a process artist I am also steered by the unexpected, by the properties and possibilities inherent to encaustic as a medium. The physicality of the medium is an important component of making the work. Initially, I work in mixed media on panel, often burning and incising initial ideas in the form of crude drawings into the wood. Images are buried, excavated, redefined over and over, using a variety of drawing and print making processes together with multiple translucent overlays of oil paint, pure beeswax, and dry pigments. Historically, beeswax speaks to both cosmetology and embalming. Like many women artists of my generation, another recurring theme is "body as identity, body as heritage, body as landscape." For me, the layers of beeswax, stained with pigment and "tattooed" with iconography, reference "skin." Ideas, memories, questions surface, are burnished, eroded, leave scars. The final surface itself seems temporary, a momentary liminus between exposure and erasure, between immanence and dissolution, a tenuous record of the body’s persistent interventions in an on going narrative.

In 2004, following a trip to south east Asia where I spent my childhood, I made a large body of work entitled The Silk Road Series (Letters Home), which examined ideas about "authenticity," historicism and personal mythology. My current and on going body of work, Learning To Breathe in Ordinary Time (What does it mean to live in the desert ?) arises from my relocation in the Sonoran Desert drylands. It confronts the issues of space and time, which arise amidst such vastness, the challenge of learning to live in the desert, the narrow margins which separate survival, transformation and extinction in this searing environment. The work continues to explore ideas about "journey," the journey into the desert and the journey out, boundaries, actual and imaginal. Buried drawings reference both current scientific "creation" theories - Darwinism, Relativity, String Theory, Chaos Theory – prehistoric maps and pictograms from various cultures and the almost forgotten heritage of the early medieval Coptic mystics known as the "Desert Mothers."

Resume

Education

University of Sussex, England. B.A.. English and American Literature

University of London, England, M.A. Women’s Studies

University of California, Berkeley, Extension, Certificate in Substance Abuse and Family Counseling

Selected 2004/2005 Exhibitions

SHE OBJECTS, Selected Tucson Women Artists, Conrad Wilde Gallery, curated by Simon Donovan, Tucson, AZ, December 2005

"Out of the Ashes," Solo Exhibit at Liz Hernandez Gallery, Tucson, AZ, October 2005

Heart/Felt, Mind/Spirit Gallery, Sausalito, CA, December 2005

Works on Paper: 5 Contemporary Regional Artists, November 2005, Zane Bennett Gallery, Santa Fe, NM.

New Mexico State Regional Invitational, Las Cruces, NM, June 2005

Small works Invitational, Davis Dominguez Gallery, Tucson, AZ, July, 2005

Solo 2-year Retrospective and Selection of Recent Work, Central Arizona College Gallery, March 2005

Emerging Contemporary Artists Expo, March, 2005 Scottsdale, AZ (presented by the Liz Hernandez Gallery

Parallel Worlds, Liz Hernandez Gallery, November 2004, Tucson, AZ

What’s Love Got to Do With It? Fall 2004, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ,

The Experimental Monoprint, 2005 Group Invitational, UC Berkeley Gallery, CA

Visiones de Mujeres / Tucson Women Artists, Raices Teller, Gallery, Tucson, AZ

Sharing Space, Summer Invitational, Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA

Wherefore Art Thou? (Artists contemplate Shakespeare) Etherton Gallery at The Temple of Art and Music, Tucson, AZ

2005 Out of the Ashes, Solo Exhibit at Liz Hernandez Gallery, Tucson, AZ.

2005 Solo 2-year Retrospective and Selection of Recent Work, Central Arizona College

2004 The Rillito Passion (mixed media installation), DCA Gallery, Tucson AZ

2004 The Spanda Suite, 3-Falk Gallery, Tucson, AZ

2004 A Different Perspective, Arthaus Gallery, Silver City, NM

2003 New Paintings and Recent Work, Phantom Gallery, Tucson, AZ

2003 Between Here and There, Gallery at Hotel Congress, Tucson, AZ

2002 Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA.

Two Person Shows

2003 Wash and Ravage (mixed media installation), DCA Gallery, Tucson AZ

2003 Ascensio Fine Art and Design, Tucson, AZ
Arthaus Gallery, Silver City, NM

2003 Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA

2003 Narrative and Line, University of Berkeley Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2002 Sight and Insight Gallery, Mill Valley, CA

2001 Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA

2001 Hang Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2004 Small Works Invitational, DCA Gallery, Tucson AZ

2004 The 3-Falk Gallery, Tucson, AZ

2004 Spring Invitational, Etherton Gallery, Tucson, AZ

2004 Ascensio Fine Art and Design, Tucson, AZ
Fault Lines, Lodo Gallery, Phoenix, AZ

2003 Arthaus Gallery, Silver City, NM

2003 Menlo Fine Arts, Sausalito, CA

2003 Spring Invitational, Etherton Gallery, Tucson, AZ

2003 Arthaus Gallery, Silver City, NM
Ascensio Fine Art and Design, Tucson, NM

2002 Sight and Insight, Mill Valley, CA

2002 Mission District Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA

2002 The Arthaus Gallery, Silver City, NM

2002 Hang Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2002 Sight and Insight Gallery, Mill Valley, CA

2002 The Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA

2002 Spring Invitational, Etherton Gallery, Tucson, AZ

2002 Southampton University Art Gallery, Southampton, Hants, UK

2002 LGBT Center Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2001 TransAmerica Pyramid Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2001 Gallery Route One, Point Reyes, CA.

2001 Marin Arts Council Community Gallery, Corte Madera, CA

2001 Hang Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2001 Artspace: Marin Community Foundation, San Rafael CA

2000 The Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA.

2000 The City Art Gallery, University of California Extension, San Francisco, CA

1999 The Atrium Gallery, Wells Fargo Corporate Headquarters, San Francisco, CA.

1999 Artspace: Marin Community Foundation, Corte Madera, CA

1999 Gallery Route One, Point Reyes, CA

1998 Falkirk Gallery, San Rafael, CA

1998 Gallery Route One, Point Reyes, CA

1998 Bishops Waltham Manor Gallery, Bishops Waltham, Hants, UK

1998 The Women’s Building Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Shows scheduled for 2005/2006 Season

3-in1, 3 person show ,Zane Bennett Gallery, Santa Fe, NM May 2006

Emerging Women: Visual arts and The New Feminism Oakland Museum, CA, July-August, 2006

Regional Invitational Encaustic Show, DCA Gallery Tucson, AZ, March, 2006

In The Square, Southern Contemporary Arts Center, Winchester, Hants, UK, Summer 2006

Awards, Commissions and Residencies

2005, NMSU Permanent Collection Purchase Award

2003 Arizona Commisssion on the Arts, Professional Development Award

2001 Residency: Anderson Arts Ranch, Snowmass, CO

2001 The Witness Tree, Site Specific Installation for SAFE/Network, CA

2000 Residency: Wild Carrots Artists’ Studios, Inverness, CA

2000 Transforming Communities, installation and performance art project, Marin Community Foundation, CA

2000 Standing/Ground, workshop series and interactive installation, San Francisco, CA

1999 Individual Artist/Community Arts Award, San Rafael, CA

1998 Special Arts Commission Award, 1998 site specific installation for California Department of Public Health Annual Conference on Women and Violence



	Lucinda Young – Artist Statement As a visual artist with an academic background in literature and cultural studies, the connections between verbal and visual language – pictographs, hieroglyphics, ideograms, calligraphy - continue to influence my work profoundly. As an only child raised in South East Asia in somewhat isolated circumstances, I invented imaginary languages. The way I work today continues to evoke that sense of inventing a language to communicate an intuited "truth," a truth only partially understood and largely imagined or invented. I read voraciously and indiscriminately. I love to travel and references to cartography often figure in my work, as do diagrammatic structures which evoke organic, anatomical, astronomical and geological systems. Theology, across the entire spectrum of the world’s religious and philosophical traditions, is foundational for me. My work frequently questions what it might mean in contemporary, secular culture to think of art as a form for meditation or prayer. Western medieval art and classic Chinese and Japanese are significant points of reference as are ancient codices and the literary, epistolary and visual narrative traditions associated with the history of pilgrimage. A new body of work is often triggered by chance - a nugget of new and intriguing information, a photo in a newspaper, a conversation overheard. Being an associative thinker, I embark on wide ranging research and accumulate an extensive vocabulary of new shapes and images. As a process artist I am also steered by the unexpected, by the properties and possibilities inherent to encaustic as a medium. The physicality of the medium is an important component of making the work. Initially, I work in mixed media on panel, often burning and incising initial ideas in the form of crude drawings into the wood. Images are buried, excavated, redefined over and over, using a variety of drawing and print making processes together with multiple translucent overlays of oil paint, pure beeswax, and dry pigments. Historically, beeswax speaks to both cosmetology and embalming. Like many women artists of my generation, another recurring theme is "body as identity, body as heritage, body as landscape." For me, the layers of beeswax, stained with pigment and "tattooed" with iconography, reference "skin." Ideas, memories, questions surface, are burnished, eroded, leave scars. The final surface itself seems temporary, a momentary liminus between exposure and erasure, between immanence and dissolution, a tenuous record of the body’s persistent interventions in an on going narrative. In 2004, following a trip to south east Asia where I spent my childhood, I made a large body of work entitled The Silk Road Series (Letters Home), which examined ideas about "authenticity," historicism and personal mythology. My current and on going body of work, Learning To Breathe in Ordinary Time (What does it mean to live in the desert ?) arises from my relocation in the Sonoran Desert drylands. It confronts the issues of space and time, which arise amidst such vastness, the challenge of learning to live in the desert, the narrow margins which separate survival, transformation and extinction in this searing environment. The work continues to explore ideas about "journey," the journey into the desert and the journey out, boundaries, actual and imaginal. Buried drawings reference both current scientific "creation" theories - Darwinism, Relativity, String Theory, Chaos Theory – prehistoric maps and pictograms from various cultures and the almost forgotten heritage of the early medieval Coptic mystics known as the "Desert Mothers." Resume Education University of Sussex, England. B.A.. English and American Literature University of London, England, M.A. Women’s Studies University of California, Berkeley, Extension, Certificate in Substance Abuse and Family Counseling Selected 2004/2005 Exhibitions SHE OBJECTS, Selected Tucson Women Artists, Conrad Wilde Gallery, curated by Simon Donovan, Tucson, AZ, December 2005 "Out of the Ashes," Solo Exhibit at Liz Hernandez Gallery, Tucson, AZ, October 2005 Heart/Felt, Mind/Spirit Gallery, Sausalito, CA, December 2005 Works on Paper: 5 Contemporary Regional Artists, November 2005, Zane Bennett Gallery, Santa Fe, NM. New Mexico State Regional Invitational, Las Cruces, NM, June 2005 Small works Invitational, Davis Dominguez Gallery, Tucson, AZ, July, 2005 Solo 2-year Retrospective and Selection of Recent Work, Central Arizona College Gallery, March 2005 Emerging Contemporary Artists Expo, March, 2005 Scottsdale, AZ (presented by the Liz Hernandez Gallery Parallel Worlds, Liz Hernandez Gallery, November 2004, Tucson, AZ What’s Love Got to Do With It? Fall 2004, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ, The Experimental Monoprint, 2005 Group Invitational, UC Berkeley Gallery, CA Visiones de Mujeres / Tucson Women Artists, Raices Teller, Gallery, Tucson, AZ Sharing Space, Summer Invitational, Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA Wherefore Art Thou? (Artists contemplate Shakespeare) Etherton Gallery at The Temple of Art and Music, Tucson, AZ Solo Shows 2005 Out of the Ashes, Solo Exhibit at Liz Hernandez Gallery, Tucson, AZ. 2005 Solo 2-year Retrospective and Selection of Recent Work, Central Arizona College 2004 The Rillito Passion (mixed media installation), DCA Gallery, Tucson AZ 2004 The Spanda Suite, 3-Falk Gallery, Tucson, AZ 2004 A Different Perspective, Arthaus Gallery, Silver City, NM 2003 New Paintings and Recent Work, Phantom Gallery, Tucson, AZ 2003 Between Here and There, Gallery at Hotel Congress, Tucson, AZ 2002 Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA. Two Person Shows 2003 Wash and Ravage (mixed media installation), DCA Gallery, Tucson AZ 2003 Ascensio Fine Art and Design, Tucson, AZ Arthaus Gallery, Silver City, NM 2003 Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA 2003 Narrative and Line, University of Berkeley Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2002 Sight and Insight Gallery, Mill Valley, CA 2001 Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA 2001 Hang Gallery, San Francisco, CA Group Shows 2004 Small Works Invitational, DCA Gallery, Tucson AZ 2004 The 3-Falk Gallery, Tucson, AZ 2004 Spring Invitational, Etherton Gallery, Tucson, AZ 2004 Ascensio Fine Art and Design, Tucson, AZ Fault Lines, Lodo Gallery, Phoenix, AZ 2003 Arthaus Gallery, Silver City, NM 2003 Menlo Fine Arts, Sausalito, CA 2003 Spring Invitational, Etherton Gallery, Tucson, AZ 2003 Arthaus Gallery, Silver City, NM Ascensio Fine Art and Design, Tucson, NM 2002 Sight and Insight, Mill Valley, CA 2002 Mission District Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA 2002 The Arthaus Gallery, Silver City, NM 2002 Hang Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2002 Sight and Insight Gallery, Mill Valley, CA 2002 The Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA 2002 Spring Invitational, Etherton Gallery, Tucson, AZ 2002 Southampton University Art Gallery, Southampton, Hants, UK 2002 LGBT Center Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2001 TransAmerica Pyramid Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2001 Gallery Route One, Point Reyes, CA. 2001 Marin Arts Council Community Gallery, Corte Madera, CA 2001 Hang Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2001 Artspace: Marin Community Foundation, San Rafael CA 2000 The Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA. 2000 The City Art Gallery, University of California Extension, San Francisco, CA 1999 The Atrium Gallery, Wells Fargo Corporate Headquarters, San Francisco, CA. 1999 Artspace: Marin Community Foundation, Corte Madera, CA 1999 Gallery Route One, Point Reyes, CA 1998 Falkirk Gallery, San Rafael, CA 1998 Gallery Route One, Point Reyes, CA 1998 Bishops Waltham Manor Gallery, Bishops Waltham, Hants, UK 1998 The Women’s Building Gallery, San Francisco, CA Shows scheduled for 2005/2006 Season 3-in1, 3 person show ,Zane Bennett Gallery, Santa Fe, NM May 2006 Emerging Women: Visual arts and The New Feminism Oakland Museum, CA, July-August, 2006 Regional Invitational Encaustic Show, DCA Gallery Tucson, AZ, March, 2006 In The Square, Southern Contemporary Arts Center, Winchester, Hants, UK, Summer 2006 Awards, Commissions and Residencies 2005, NMSU Permanent Collection Purchase Award 2003 Arizona Commisssion on the Arts, Professional Development Award 2001 Residency: Anderson Arts Ranch, Snowmass, CO 2001 The Witness Tree, Site Specific Installation for SAFE/Network, CA 2000 Residency: Wild Carrots Artists’ Studios, Inverness, CA 2000 Transforming Communities, installation and performance art project, Marin Community Foundation, CA 2000 Standing/Ground, workshop series and interactive installation, San Francisco, CA 1999 Individual Artist/Community Arts Award, San Rafael, CA 1998 Special Arts Commission Award, 1998 site specific installation for California Department of Public Health Annual Conference on Women and Violence





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