To the River | Joyce Lyon

The river is the Tiber / Tevere, which passes below the Umbrian town in Italy where the artist spends time each year.  In these large-scale oil stick works, Lyon responds to an unusual aqua color of the water – is it an effect of light, or sediment or something shifting in the environment?  The road leading to the river is Roman, more than 2,000 years old.  She meditates on the ancient history of this place and its present life and on the ability of drawn and verbal languages to communicate experience.

She writes: My work focuses on the intersections of place and memory.  I work from observation and emotion, with an acute sense of the layering of time.  Thoughts about knowing a place intimately, about history and legacy are active as I work.  I am making translations through the visual language of gesture and color, attempting to evoke a complex experience of being in place.

About the Artist:
Joyce Lyon has used drawing and artists books to address issues of identity, ecology and aging from a personal and female perspective. She has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation / Minnesota Center for Book Arts, the Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad, and the residency program at the Millay Colony for the Arts. Her work is in many public and private collections, including the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the Minnesota Historical Society, Georgetown University Law Library, and the Florida Holocaust Museum / Tampa.  Recent exhibitions include: Drawn to the Passing Blue, Bethel University; Cooper’s Pond, Form+Content Gallery; Crosby Farm Park, Groveland Gallery; and Shifting Perspectives: Dialogue in Place, University of Leeds, England.  Joyce was a founding member of the feminist arts collective, WARM.  She received her MFA from the University of Minnesota, where she is Associate Professor of Art emerita.

Gallery Hours:
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 12:00 – 6:00 pm and by appointment    

Image: The river, the mirror / il fiume, lo specchio, 2025, Oil stick on Arches oil paper, 40”hx51.5”