ARTIST STATEMENT
I make artwork as a means to process my inner life. I rely heavily on bright, saturated color that demands to be looked at. It’s my hope that like a kaleidoscope – the colors, shapes, and their patterns both unsettle and resettle into a new sensibility – a reordering that ultimately feels reassuring. In the end, each piece feels like a new home in which for me to reside. When I asked my daughter on her 15th birthday how she felt, she replied “Halfway to thirty!” This statement struck me as funny, horrifying, wonderful and exciting. In this portrait of her preparing for a school dance, I considered what it means to be a young woman in a world that often disrespects women, and what it means to mother her. I appreciate my daughter’s strength and authenticity. She sees and speaks to herself in ways that go beyond my expectations.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Anna Lentz is a visual artist and arts educator living in Dundee, IL. She studied anthropology, women’s studies, and studio art at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN as well as community art at California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA. She earned her MA in Art Education at School of the Arts Institute, Chicago, IL. Her research interests include community-based art education, hospitality, and vernacular art. Anna currently processes her emotions and life happenings through painting and sewing vibrant colors and shapes. She also explores the natural worlds of her woodland home where she practices conservation and agroforestry.
© Anna Lentz