Meet Lisa Alberts

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Alberts. 

Hi Lisa, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My first true artistic experience happened at the ballet barre. I was a committed dancer until an injury forced me to pick a different medium. Dance was my first love, providing me with a strong foundation of self-expression and solidifying creativity as survival in my life. After getting my BFA from Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, I went on to work in commercial photography for a number of years before attending graduate school at Durham University in Durham, UK, to study Photo Theory. When I returned to the US, I had the honor of interning at the Detroit Institute of Arts in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, after which I floundered for many years trying to find the balance between making money and making art. As my eldest daughter recently observed “artists and money aren’t very good friends, are they?” It was alongside the births of my two children that my art practice as it exists now was born. Becoming a mother, for me, brought into laser focus the sustaining nature of an art practice and for the first time, it somehow felt feasible. 

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
For me, the biggest struggles have been ones of identity and priority. It took me a decade to accept the truth that I could claim Artist for myself without having any of the accolades or accomplishments. Whether it was a false narrative society had established for me or a lie I told myself, I had convinced myself that that ship had sailed when I failed to develop a successful art career straight out of art school. My other big hurdle was not prioritizing building a practice that was sustainable. I had all the typical excuses — not enough time, money, or space. I struggled to accept that the practice could be small in both scope and time spent. 

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My current work is an exploration of how the maternal experience feels in the body. I use alternative photography methods to create textiles and soft sculptures that explore ideas of play and repetition and examine the space where anxiety and parenthood meet. Process is central to my work and my children play an important role in my process. In my Acute Onset series, I give my children nearly free rein to make large sunprints, which I then sew up and twist into tightly bound knots. These pieces address feelings of uncertainty amidst repetition and explore the weight of anxiety alongside the playfulness of childhood activities such as imagining, gathering, ordering, and archiving. My work often features bright colors and sunprints of common household or childhood objects. I think the collaboration with my children is an unusual one. Artist/Mothers are often without consistent childcare, and this as made worse in the early days of the pandemic so I just embraced my children’s marks and the art-making relationship grew from there. In my experience, Art and Motherhood are both the knowing and the unknowing, the creation and healing of wounds, the isolation and never-aloneness and I see my work as an investigation of this duality. 

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
So many lessons. I learned that I can make do with what I have — I started printing on old bed linens, stuffing my sculptures with fill from extra pillows and dryer lint, even bending paperclips into usable hardware to hang my work! I learned that I can have a studio in my home and have my children underfoot and make really rewarding work. I learned how important it is to say out loud what you’re grieving and what you’re dreaming because life is really uncertain — pain and disappointment are part of it but so art joy and hope. And I learned that sometimes a kitchen dance party is the best balm for a weary soul. 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lisaalberts.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisaalberts.art/