It’s when artists start to open up about what inspired them that the real meat of their work makes itself visible. As Park stood in front of her work, she described the first time she saw the art of Alexander Calder.
Park had already been creating massive wire mobiles as tall as seven stories for commissions around the world, and using the metal to sculpt portraits of people and animals, when a Calder retrospective came to Washington, D.C, where she was working with the Environmental Protection Agency.
The exhibition brought her to tears.
“It felt like we were speaking to each other,” she said.
A little background — Calder started sculpting wire portraits of fellow avant-garde artists as he rode his bicycle through 1920s Paris. His famous abstract mobiles soon followed.
“Calder’s Circus”, a miniature performance art piece that comprises wire and found-object circus performers and animals, is currently celebrating its 100th anniversary at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
These iconic works, though unknown to Park when she became a professional artist, demonstrate a kinship with the pieces she has on display at Dana Wiley. From wire mobiles to bronze animals, art history, world history, and personal history all weave their way through her work.
A charmed life
Park lives what could be described as a charmed life, keeping studios in London and Morocco, with frequent stopovers to her hometown of Dayton. She travels with her art in suitcases, unpacking and re-animating wire pieces, and climbing up scaffolding to install them.
Her work is kept in the private collections of King Charles III of England and King Mohammed VI of Morocco. She has created art in an ancient olive grove and a Saudian palace.
Park grew up in Oakwood with an adventurous spirit that was evident from a young age. Through paper routes and dog walking, she raised funds to attend wilderness leadership school in Vermont at the age of 16, learning rock climbing, river crossing, and dogsledding.
Wanderlust continued into her adult life, and when she decided to leave her comfortable position at the EPA to become a full-time artist, she landed at a “finca” in Majorca, a rural olive ranch with 1000-year-old trees.
“It was like going back in time, making olive oil with a mule in the barn. I learned to work big, and the connection to nature was just euphoric.
“One thing always leads to another, and I found that with my art, if I was open to the opportunities and the people that came my way, it was like getting on a snow sled and going down a hill and just going where it takes you.”
Drawing with wire
Even the sculptures that are up to 15 feet long are made from just one piece of wire, having the effect of a fluid gesture drawing. By using a variety of thicknesses of wire, the wall shadows behind the pieces take on a variety of values in terms of opacity.
The suspensions depict various mythological figures, including Icarus, Pegasus, and mermaids — a motif that has popped up in her work since she learned metal casting at Oakwood High School.
“Icarus flies too close to the sun and loses his wings. Icarus is a tragic figure, and Pegasus is this thing of beauty and strength. In mythology they were never really hanging out together, but when you’re an artist you can make up stories and scenes,” said Park.
She began the series when she was noticed people in high places “falling from power”, including Muammar Gaddafi and Bill Clinton. During the time she was cultivating her practice in Marrakech, the United States was entering into war with Afghanistan and Iraq.
“There was a lot of upheaval in the world. Often my pieces emerge against a backdrop of world events,” she said.
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Wire is a little unwieldy, yet light in the air, and the artist describes the medium as “playful and intuitive”. Mounted to a wall across from the mobiles are three bust-like faces. Sculpted with open wire and small found objects hanging inside the framework, they represent an individual’s thoughts.
Earth Stacks
In another corner of the gallery is a collection with a different feel, reflective of Park’s varied practice. The installation that she refers to as “Earth Stacks” resemble alien figures made of found objects, including lampshades and globes.
They feel a bit like oversized childrens’ stacking toys, and similar to the wire suspensions, have a playful quality.
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Park started experimenting with the forms during the Covid Pandemic, and for her they reference cairns, piles of stones that “guide people to safety”.
The globes that cap the stacks reference climate change and natural disasters. They are also inspired by the “overview effect”, a shift in awareness reported by some astronauts after viewing Earth from space. This theory of interconnectedness is characterized by a feeling of awe and the understanding of Earth’s fragile beauty.
The stacks are also reflections of places she has lived, represented in spheres made of English toile and Moroccan mercury glass, and an Old World Savings Bank globe made in Ohio.
Metal menagerie
In the side room of the gallery is a menagerie of small sculptures in materials sourced from various locales. The work is more precious, due to the miniature format, and also the personal subject matter.
In Marrakech, Park is able to purchase sheets of brass in the local market called the souk. She used locally made metal shears to cut the sheets into strips, then wraps, folds and presses these around wire to create horse sculptures.
She has loved horses since learning to ride them in childhood.
A shadow box of found materials — a doily, porcelain gravy boat, and bird’s nest —comments on the disappearing skills of women’s handiwork, including the legacy of lacemaking. Park says she used to observe women making lace on the side of the road in Spain and Portugal. She seeks to honor the history of the craft rather than appropriate it, and to find connections “between nature and the human hand”.
In a vitrine rests bronze miniatures plated in precious metals, including two sterling silver mermaids she made as a teenager at Oakwood High School.
Mr. Carmichael, her art teacher, introduced her to metalwork. Park would ride her bike around to neighborhood garage sales in search of sterling cutlery, and melt them down at school.
“One day he came in and said, I think it’s time for you to learn how to cast metal. He brought in all this equipment — a centrifuge, a little kiln — and set it up in a corner of the classroom. It was kind of dangerous. You melt it in the crucible and then you wind it up, you let it go and it spins around and he would say, ‘Okay, everybody, duck!’
“It was like a fish to water.”
She’s loved working in the medium ever since.
HOW TO GO
What: Lori Park Wire Mobiles, Assemblages, Textural Panels and Other New Works From Marrakech, London and Dayton
When: Through Jan. 18 at Dana L. Wiley Gallery, Front Street Building Co., 1001 E. Second St., Dayton; B/C entrance, second floor
Other: Open on First Friday, Dec. 5. To schedule a viewing, contact DanaLWileyGallery@gmail.com.
More info: danalwileygallery.com
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