Infinity of Worlds

COLLAGE ON VIEW

Erika Lawlor Schmidt: Infinity of Worlds
at BigTown Gallery in Rochester, Vermont, USA
17 October-8 December 2018

Erika Lawlor Schmidt says about this work:
The use of technology has led us to diminish the vitality of the directly experienced world. For many, this disembodied existence is their new reality. As an artist and observer of this phenomenon I can sometimes feel out of sync in my own time. In his novel, Einstein’s Dream, physicist and author Alan Lightman writes that “some people are content to live in contradictory worlds so long as they know the reason for each.” Through this work, I embrace the notion of “contradictory worlds” and recognize that we (humans) live and navigate in worlds that may be self-constructed, dreamt or imagined. We navigate in “parallel universes”. Incongruous observation and experience have been prevailing threads running through my work. When making collage, I am delighted to find myself at the center of a vortex…an excavator of mystery and potentiality. The collage series “Infinity of Worlds” offers intimate musings about the collective unconscious, about time as ephemeral, and about the interconnectedness of all living things. My work speaks to an understanding and urgency to pay attention to the vulnerability and sustainability of earth. Essential to my work is recognition of fragile connections.

Born in Lake Forest, Illinois, Erika Lawlor Schmidt has shaped a career as a visual and performing artist whose work is deeply shaped by investigations into Eastern philosophy and Indian mysticism. Schmidt received her B.F.A. from the University of South Florida in Tampa and did post-baccalaureate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She later earned an M.F.A. from the University of South Florida, where she founded the Vital Spark Performance Group, a collaborative interdisciplinary ensemble that has traveled to major U.S. cities and throughout Europe.

(Text adapted from the artist’s press materials)


INFORMATION

BigTown Gallery
99 North Main Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767 USA
(802) 767-9670

Hours:
Wednesday-Friday, 10AM-5PM
Saturday, Noon-5PM
Sunday-Tuesday, by appointment only

MAP | WEBSITE | FACEBOOK

Image:
Sojourn of Parallel Worlds
by Erika Lawlor Schmidt
12″x9.5″
collage
2018
Courtesy of the artist and BigTown Gallery, Rochester, Vermont