ABOUT the ARTIST
Lexi lives in Chicago with her husband, Kurt and their two cats, Monster and Monkey. Originally from New Jersey, her family relocated to Arizona when she was young where she spent most of her childhood. Upon graduating high school, Lexi moved to California where she earned her BA in Visual Arts from UC, Santa Barbara and then moved to San Francisco where she explored both gallery work and commercial photography. Working mostly in interior design photography, Lexi later moved to New York where she lived both in Manhattan and Brooklyn before moving to Chicago to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Upon receiving her masters, Lexi began working as an art teacher for the Chicago Public Schools. Now in her 14th year as a high school art teacher, she shares her love of creating with students on the west side of Chicago, while making her own art to share with friends, family, students, and potential collectors.
ARTIST STATEMENT of PURPOSE
My work is a hybrid of imagination and scientific inquiry that explores both exterior and interior spaces of physical and emotional realms. I create invented terrains that mimic the places we occupy both outside and inside as a way to understand how to represent physical and psychological states that we feel but often cannot articulate.
I work both 2-dimensionally and 3-dimensionally using various media to express these ideas. Much of the work is inspired by microscopic images abstracted through magnification, such as pollen, as well as theories of how energy is transferred from one place or person to another. The former works are often inhabited by a character I invented called LUCA, a made up figure related to the scientific concept known as the ‘Last Universal Common Ancestor’ or L.U.C.A., defined as “the most recent population of organisms from which all organisms now living on Earth have a common descent.”* LUCA embodies the human instinct to work towards known or abstract goals in order to complete a task regardless of the relevance or outcome. The latter works attempt to visually represent the transfer of energy within a physical form or body as well as without, from one form to another. These energies are depicted through imaginary faces/people or organically-inspired abstractions that appear to be transforming from one state to another.
In making this work I can explore spaces that are felt but often unseen and therefore hard to express verbally. The practice of creating visuals for these psychological states provide a space to confront but also escape those unexplained actions and emotions that can seem overwhelming at times. Through my work I attempt to tame and set free the messy and often ridiculous nature of existence.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_common_ancestor