Lisa Blas 2025

Lisa Blas
An island is an oculus in reverse
3 April to 17 May 2025

Studio open to the public on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 12 noon to 4:00pm (except 30 April, 1 & 2 May)

My residency involves the development of a new archipelago imaginary using the southwest region of Ireland as a guide. I will visit nearby islands to photograph landscapes, study historical maps, and make field recordings, before commencing a large painting inspired by the natural elements. A choreographer and sound artist will be invited to respond to these locations and my findings, for a future collaborative performance. I wish to expand the space of painting into a multisensory framework, where visual and audio sensations oscillate.

Since 2020, I have focused my artistic interest in the oculus—a portal connecting interior and exterior space from Renaissance and Baroque architecture. The oculus took on contemporary resonance for me during the Covid-19 lockdown when I began Dawn studio, a daily practice of painting during the dawn hours, with a viewpoint overlooking the Hudson River in New York City. While observing the chromatic gradations over the sky and water, I began painting ocular shapes hovering within an interstitial space, using transparent, opaque and interference layers. These curvilinear shapes began to resemble islands, and I realized that an island is an oculus in reverse.

The subject of islands begins in the birthplace of my father in the U.S. territory of Guåhan and casts a net across oceans to reach Ireland. Both locations are islands with ancient histories, languages, and sites of departures and returns. With the project to expand painting into a participatory space, I will invite the local community and my collaborators for an afternoon of storytelling around these themes. Afterward, I will teach specific techniques in painting and collage, and we will begin making a scenography together. Here, a twinning of islands and stories, people and place will begin to emerge.

Lisa Blas is a CHamoru / Italian-American painter and educator working between New York and Brussels. Utilizing references in art history and the environment, she produces “afterchromes”—abstract paintings that speak to the changing chroma of the natural world. Recent publications of her work have appeared in Effects Journal, University of Hawai’i Press, The Brooklyn Rail and The Drift. Blas publishes the weekly Monday’s image, digital pairings of newspaper front pages with artworks from museum collections. In 2024, she was artist-in-residence at Frans Masereel Centrum, Belgium. Blas exhibits nationally and internationally, and currently teaches at New York Academy of Art.

Blue Sky: @lisablas-studio.bsky.social
Instagram: @lisablas_studio / @mondaysimage
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lisablas/
www.lisablas.com

WCAC acknowledges the financial support of Cork County Council and The Arts Council in making these residencies possible.