About LISA A. FRANK

Biography

Lisa A. Frank is a Sony Alpha+ photographer and a MacDowell Fellow in photography. She holds an MFA in Design Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she has taught textile design in the Design Studies Department and digital photography in the Art Department. Lisa holds a BS in art education from the UW-Madison and a graduate certificate from the Yale School of Drama. Lisa has led nature photography workshops at Penland School of Crafts and the Aldo Leopold Nature Center on the subject of discovering the natural world using technology-based tools.

Lisa’s meandering path to photography has connections to a childhood growing up in rural Illinois where she was able to freely explore the out-of-doors. When she was young, her father founded a summer stock theatre and as a teenager, she helped out—painting scenery, running a follow-spot, building props—loving it all. After completing an undergraduate degree, she moved to NYC for an internship at Juilliard to focus on set design and painting in its Stage Department. This was followed by 3 years at the Yale School of Drama and then, by many years working as a union scenic artist at the Metropolitan Opera, and in Broadway and film scene shops.

As her interests changed, she began designing textiles, wall-coverings, and decorative surfaces for high-end interior projects.This decades long history of painting ornate, operatically-scaled back drops and designing wallpaper patterns continues to influence her photographic work (she painted the oversized floral pattern shown behind the elderly couples in “When Harry Met Sally”—in 1988!).

Somewhere along the way she bought her first digital camera, a clunky Macintosh II, and took a series of photoshop courses at the School of Visual Arts. A new game was on. She moved back to the Midwest fifteen years ago to be closer to family and subsequently went back to school to get a MFA in design studies from the UW-Madison. This gave her access to great equipment and an opportunity to experiment with new technology.

With the support of the Living Environments Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Lisa was an early developer of virtual reality content created specifically to be experienced as an art exhibition. She has since developed nature themed VR apps to be used in hospitals as a pain reduction tool for children.

All along the way, the acquisition of new skills has kept her creative process lively. She’s a life-long learner! Although this might seem like a complicated narrative, the through-line relates to having a committed creative life that evolves over decades.

Lisa’s growing body of work is exhibited in galleries and sold as limited edition fine art prints. Known for its engaging nature-themed content, her work is collected by major health centers and hospitals. She has also received many commissions to create work to be used in hospitality, corporate and education settings.

Lisa lives in rural Wisconsin with her partner and a menagerie of wild and domesticated animals.

To learn more:

https://www.lisafrankphotography.com

#lisa_frank_photography

General Artist Statement

My work begins always with a deeply felt connection to the natural world and rises up from time spent exploring it. My purpose is to draw the viewer into a local world as it hasn’t been seen before, to create a context for a relationship with nature that is charged with wonder and richly complex, while being inclusive and accessible.

I approach photography much as a painter. For me, the purpose of taking pictures is to create a visual diary of raw materials--the tubes of paint. Whether looking at jellyfish in an aquarium or a Lady Slipper orchid along the Ice Age Trail, these “snapshots”—at times ordinary, at times astonishing— become part of a library of remembrances stored for a later date when they might become part of a layered, composited digital painting.

In this way I use photography as a means to an end. My artwork is composited from many images and involves complex layering and digital painting to create the final result. My photo library has over 100,000 images at this point that I draw from, and it grows by the day. This photographic journal keeping forms a personal, arbitrary, asymmetrical time chart that is deeply resonant for me and key to my understanding of what it means to be alive and of this world. My camera brings me in closer. I find that I come into a kind of “presence” where all the other daily noise in my life disappears. In that moment there is just a baby eagle testing its wings, or the dark play of light on a red-lacquered fungi.

These moments bring me tremendous joy and a sense of peace. I feel fortunate to have the time and opportunity to make these kinds of connections with the natural world. Nothing has been more gratifying than when someone writes to me—after spending days in a hospital themselves or with a loved one—to say that an artwork of mine, hanging in a corridor, buoyed their spirits. It goes without saying that I believe in the curative powers of natural world exposure. If I can bring a representation of nature inside so that someone not so able to be outdoors can receive its benefit, then I feel I have done a good deed.

I continue to be inspired by the work of William Morris and other designers of Britain’s Aesthetic Movement. Morris designed with an assurance that could only be gained from observing nature first hand. I appreciate that. My portfolios of work often have references to interior decoration: tapestries, repeating patterns, borders, ornamental detail. Many are layered over designs by William Morris, Ernst Haeckel and others which provide a formal, organizing armature. Although traces remain visible, the past is abandoned in favor of improvisational detail and elaborate surfaces. Early natural history painters inspired my “Cabinet of Curiosity” portfolio while artists and craftspeople who worked on natural history dioramas inspired the “Captive Splendor” series as did Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs of the Natural History Museum in NY. Ross Bleckner and Walton Ford are two painters who I never tire of.

Transforming inspiration into a new body of work, however, is not quite as easy. I sometimes unravel new possibilities as I swim laps or pull weeds. I have an abundance of ideas but not the hours available to sit in front of a computer screen. I get stiff! Inspiration lurks everywhere: for example, the wonderful use of a slightly disturbing wallpaper in the opening credits of “The White Lotus” as well as a deck of playing cards that I was given with a different bird painting by Jessie Arms Botke on each card. Out in the garden, I’m inspired by what I manage to grow and roused by the haunting, distinctive calls heralding the spring return of sandhill cranes. I’m inspired by the hard work of all migrating birds and their miraculous abilities to find their way home.

As an observer of nature, I am repeatedly stopped in my tracks to wonder, “How in the world did this happen?” I am piecing together a visual language that attempts to communicate these personal experiences of transcendence--opening the possibilitiy that connections will be formed.

To learn more:

https://www.lisafrankphotography.com

#lisa_frank_photography

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