Lisa Blas: Meet Me at the Mason Dixon

In this series, images and objects from museum archives are excavated for the narratives of the American nineteenth century.  Research and travel to locations such as Antietam National Battlefield, the Gettysburg National Military Park, the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia serve as departure points for Blas's investigations into national identity, cultural myths, and American history.

Lisa Blas is a visual artist from Los Angeles, California, currently based in Brussels, Belgium. In her art, she utilizes portraiture, still life and site-specificity to reflect upon the visual culture and social history of past and present. In 2003, she moved to Washington, D.C. and began a long-term project in photography, painting and installation on various constructions of the "American experience." Traveling extensively throughout the southern, mid-Atlantic and northeastern United States, she examined commemorative sites, historical archives and museum collections from the nineteenth and twentieth century, locating material for such projects. Since her relocation to Brussels, she has commenced working with archives within the library of the Département Arts Plastiques, Université de Lille 3, at the Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire in Brussels, at the Imperial War Museum in London, and archives circa World War I at the Mairie d'Ors, in the north of France, in conjunction with the Wilfred Owen Association, France. 

Recent shows include solo exhibitions As if pruning a tree, after Matisse at the Musée Matisse, Cateau-Cambrésis, Tourner la page, at the Galerie Commune, Tourcoing, France, and group exhibitions at Addison Ripley Fine Art, Washington, D.C. and Jaus, Los Angeles, California. Ms. Blas is a visiting artist/professor at the Université de Lille 3, where she created the seminar Nomadism, site-specificity and other modes of transit, a joint project with the University's art department and the Ecole Régionale Supérieure d'Expression Plastique in Tourcoing. She also co-taught a curatorial seminar on photography with Thierry de Duve, and participated in the panel discussion "L'atelier en question", organized by Nathalie Stefanov and Gilles Froger. This fall, she will conduct another seminar using the collection of the Eugène Leroy Museum (MUba), in Tourcoing. 

Exhibition catalogue available with essay by Miguel De Baca, Assistant Professor of Art History, Lake Forest College

This exhibition and related events are part of the Sesquicentennial Commemoration of the Civil War at Gettysburg College.

August 31 - October 7, 2011

Main Gallery

August 31, 5 to 7 p.m.

Artist's Talk: August 31, noon