DRAFT

Over the past 20 years, my work and thinking have surveyed the history of Roman catholic material culture.  Throughout, I’ve explored the stories of saints — often female martyrs — whose narratives valorize athletic feats of piety, and end tragically.  The alchemical mixture of myth, fantasy and historical fact in hagiographies reveals the links between faith and fact.

The traditional roles and functions of religious images and objects for healing, devotional practice, ritual, and communication with the ephemeral stand in stark contrast to my training as a contemporary artist, and the intellectual, secular applications of theory, aesthetics, the shifting relationships of object/context/viewer.

My work places contemporary painting and sculpture in dialogue with medieval religious images and objects. I’m intrigued by the challenge laid upon medieval image-makers to translate spiritual  and theological concepts — concepts that resist rational language — into material forms.  The visual strategies of early and medieval Christians may be obscure to us today, yet they are rich with contemporary relevance and possibility.

Lisa Sweet

Olympia, WA

2014