Singing to the Difference: An Examination of Surface Strategies 2024
![Lori Murphy](https://deltacollege.edu/sites/default/files/styles/directory_grid_item/public/lori-murphy-photo.jpg?itok=UKswSZu7)
Lori Murphy
Lori Murphy is a mixed-media artist who works with various found materials – from art history books collected at used bookstores to abandoned scraps of paper and objects found while walking the streets of San Francisco, where she lives and works. Materials and methods carry meaning, and she combines the two to create new narratives reflecting her thoughts about history, people, and community. Conceptually relevant, ingeniously creative, art is her way of dealing with and commenting on the world around her. She has exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Transforming the Canon
Five years ago, I began dismantling and reassembling a volume set of Metropolitan Seminars in Art by John Canaday. I was interested in altering his narrative, writing new stories over the old. Part of my process is the continuous rhythm of deconstruction and reconstruction–breaking down this vintage canon of art history from the 1950s and reworking it to my own liking. I ripped out pages, tore them up, obliterated sections with whitewash and graphite, then reassembled the parts until they spoke some truth to me. It has been an ongoing, mysterious search.
At first, I hand-sewed the disassembled pages together with thread. Stitching referenced "women's work," and I metaphorically mended history. My discovery of staples to fasten the fragments together significantly shifted my visual language. Not as gentle or delicate as thread, the seductive metallic staples referenced armor or weapons. Pounding the stapler was more physical than sewing, let alone the satisfying, echoing kaCHUNK with every staple–perfect for my mission of transformation in dark times.
Bumping up against and responding to these art history books has been insightful. Thinking about the artists represented, I wonder about those overlooked or not included. I grapple with what the images say about society and women. I consider the patrons' influence on the work's subject matter–what was in vogue then and had a market. I am drawn to the human experience revealed and what it tells me. All this is through John Canaday's biased filter of what is good art and what is not. History speaks to where we find ourselves today–there are lessons to be learned. It's a quagmire, a real stew, and that is where the juice is, for me. I'm finding my path forward by unmaking and remaking this old narrative, one piece at a time.
Transforming the Canon Series: Singing to the Difference
staples, graphite, wax, and pages from Metropolitan Seminars in Art by John Canaday.
26.75” x 19”
$1600
Transforming the Canon Series: Celestial
staples, graphite, wax, acrylic paint, and pages from Metropolitan Seminars in Art by John Canaday.
26” x 19 “
$1600
Transforming the Canon Series: The Matrix
staples, graphite, wax, gesso, and pages from Metropolitan Seminars in Art by John Canaday.
29” x 22”
$1800
Transforming the Canon Series: The Long Goodbye
staples, graphite, wax, gesso, and pages from Metropolitan Seminars in Art by John Canaday.
26” x 19”
$1600
Transforming the Canon:
Unanswerable Questions
staples, paint, graphite, wax, and pages from Metropolitan Seminars in Art by John Canaday.
7” x 7”
$400
Transforming the Canon:
Lost in Eden
staples, paint, graphite, wax, and pages from Metropolitan Seminars in Art by John Canaday.
7” x 7”
$400
Stapled Boxes
My interest in staples as a material continues to evolve. When amassed together, they take on a jewel-like quality. I initially used staples on art book pages but later applied them to the flattened cardboard staple box they come in. Combined with the box's anthropomorphic shape, it suddenly had a more mysterious, ceremonial, and ritualistic feeling. On Talisman, the staples have an orderliness of the grid at the edges but then erupt aggressively into chaos in the center–what is expected is shot to pieces. Harbinger announces with the radiating holy staples. Both pieces have a precious, sacred feeling, but they are just cardboard boxes and the lowly old staple that holds things together.
Talisman
staples on staple box
7.5” x 7.25”
NFS
Harbinger
staples on staple box with bookbinding tape
9.5” x 7.25”
$400