Bridge*s
LISA BEARD

STATEMENT

My work for this exhibit is a collaboration of photography, more specifically cyanotypes, an alternative photography printing method, and poetry between myself and Sophie Juhlin.

There is more than one bridge being addressed with this work; one is our relationship, which has evolved from high school English teacher (Lisa) and Freshman Honors English student (Sophie) to friendship and creative colleagues as we’ve both grown and started to work within our own artistic and creative passions. For this exhibition we utilized an organic process to find common threads already present within our individual work and either tweaked it to fit together more smoothly or have created new images and text based on the threads identified. It seems a natural fit for us as both photographs and text can be poetic, conveying messages through different means. The bridge we are working with is reciprocal, one that can cover ground going both ways in order to create meaning through imagery, repetition, composition, and words.

BIO

LISA BEARD is a fine art photographer who also enjoys creating mixed media work and writing. She was born and continues to live in Woodstock, IL where she is also a high school teacher and librarian. Throughout life, Lisa has been drawn to art, especially photography, that tells stories. From an early age, Lisa has been an avid reader and was told she had an “active imagination.” This influenced her to complete her BFA in English and to pursue teaching. While teaching high school English, Lisa re-discovered her love for storytelling and creating art by making pictures, especially through conceptual and editorial work and also through exploring and researching the history behind places and objects left behind. 

Much of Lisa’s signature work contains elements of storytelling through juxtaposition, light and dark imagery, beauty and destruction, and the idea of illusion versus reality. Many of her images also incorporate people. These conflicts work together to convey representations of paradoxical feelings and emotions. Lisa also enjoys writing, and had one book published in early 2019: Abandoned Illinois: Secrets Behind the Spaces and will have two others published in 2019: a second volume focused on Illinois and another on Wisconsin. She also enjoys using her original photography to create mixed media art. Currently Lisa is an MFA Candidate at Maine Media College in Rockport, Maine.

contact E*:
artists@e-artgroup.com