Guarded by Lisa Lackey

Guarded by Lisa Lackey, 2022, Fabric and thread on canvas, 38″ x 30″

The compositions I witness by happenstance, as I live out my life, become the subjects for my work. I select them to remind me of the inherent beauty in the world, hidden in plain sight. Recreating them in textiles, paper, and sometimes with the addition of thread, makes these fleeting moments tactile once again, memorializing the moment and feeding my soul with joy.

Lisa Lackey is a Maplewood-based fiber artist who curates her imagery from contemporary scenes she witnesses which intersect with her emotional inner dialogue. Rendering these compositions in fabric, paper, and thread, or a combination thereof, her images of everyday life resound with symbolic meaning.  Lisa hones her wide base of knowledge in architecture, graphic art, and sewing techniques to give her collages a bold, unique confluence of perspective, light, shadow, and color. Lisa’s work has shown various venues in New Jersey, including Art Fair 14C, the Monmouth Museum, the Long Beach Island Foundation for Arts + Science, and currently in a the New Jersey Arts Annual show, Emergence, at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton. In New York City her work has been seen at The Painting Center, Westbeth Gallery, and at the Garrison Arts Center in upstate New York, and Saatchi’s The Other Art Fair. Her work has traveled to the d’Art Center in Norfolk, VA as well as the Korea Bojagi Forum in the Suwon I Park Museum of Art, in Suwon, South Korea and the Chojun Textile & Quilt Art Museum in Seoul. Maplewood Township has permanently mounted one of her pieces, Maplewood’s Grace, at the Maplewood Train Station. She has authored two books about her work: The Composition of Family, a collection of her sketches, and Everyday Beauty, a series of thirty-two paper collages, respectively. Holding Bachelor’s degrees in both Architectural Engineering and Environmental Design from the University of Kansas, as well as a Master of Fine Arts, from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Lisa’s interests have taken her into architectural lighting design; costume draping; co-owner and designer of a women’s clothing company; and lastly, as a 7-12 Art and Math teacher in the New York City Public School System before giving her the chance to work full time in a studio of her own, recreating her world in fabric, paper, and thread.