home
resumé
catalogs
contact

My earliest memories involve making things: scale models of buildings, figures and puppets, paintings and drawings, sculptures and mechanical "inventions." My father's family had been glass blowers and builders. I share that love of translucence, of built space, and the ability to "eyeball" or quantity survey size and cost. My mother's family had been linen manufacturers in Germany, who we have recently found, descend from a painter and a color theorist. The fact that these origins and tools connect so accurately with my vocation is a source of wonder to me now. If there is genetic memory--then I have been fortunate.

As a child in the 1950s, I was drawn to the linear and molded shapes that came from playing the flute and to the motion and form of ballet. Marks, forms, colors, movement and sound were my principal occupations. I saw these as a unified pursuit.

In 1970 I was selected as a paid apprentice to Roger Steinhauer, muralist, from Philadelphia. We completed works from New York to Puerto Rico, including the Essex House, NY, and Dulles International Airport. I worked my way through my first two years at Tyler School of Art in Elkins Park as a muralist (1970-72).

Tyler (1970-75) was a revelation. It was a privilege to study with Richard Callner, Stephen Greene, John Moore, Roger Anliker, and Stanley Lechtzin; to have professional review with David Pease, and Italo Scanga; and watch Rudolph Staffel's work evolve. We knew it was an amazing time. I became the first Vira I. Heinz Award recipient from Tyler (1972-73), given by Mrs. Heinz of Pittsburgh to one female scholar from each of nine universities who could not otherwise have afforded travel and study abroad.

The award enabled me to visit the great art collections of Europe. Our generation had been brought up on reproductions. I now formed strong feelings about the presence of a work of art--about relationship, scale, focal distance, the artist's intention, and the relationship between an artist and his cultural origin. I observed changing light and its effect on color from the silvery northern countries to the astonishingly clean palette of the Mediterranean. Visiting Rome, I assisted the Italian sculptor Italo Scanga in the installation of his new Tyler show. At the Aegean School of Fine Art, Paros, Greece (Summer 1972), I worked intensely with this new "washed" palette of color. I began to study photography with Lawrence Bach and Leif Skoogfors, whose new photos of Ireland moved me. I participated in the making of a film about dance, which was shot by one of the cameramen from Zorba the Greek, who was so generous with his expertise regarding lighting. While there, I became the rehearsal musician for Robert Solomon (Alwin Nikolai) and Anitra Walker (Royal Ballet), molding improvisational sound around movement.

Working as a musician extended my stay in Europe and I moved to Paris in September of 1972, sharing Raymond Duncan's old studio with writers and musicians including the Beat poet Howard Hart, and painting in the most beautiful light I had yet experienced. Through these artists I was introduced to the work of the mime Etienne Decroux. I wanted to get closer to his work, to understand what this work contained that was also central to mine. In 1973 I joined a group lead by the mime Thomas Leabhart, Decroux's protege and teaching assistant, auditing his classes at the University of Arkansas. We returned to France to take up residence in the Ecole de Mime Potash, Montpellier (May-August 1973), studying and refining Decroux's Counterweights, an essential part of his technique. Leabhart had been a painter himself, and saw that I could critique movements and their authenticity-- correcting line, and anticipating its trajectory. I was excited by these experiments, though still too young to understand what an integral part they would play in my art.

Returning to Tyler, I completed my B.F.A. in Painting in 1975 and was the first undergraduate apprentice to Richard Callner, working one day each week in his studio (1973-75). Through working on his paintings, I gained valuable insight into the craft of undertaking and completing a painting before I could fully take the responsibility of authoring one.

Moving to Europe in 1975, and working as a musician enabled further study in the museums of England, France, Italy, and Ireland, where I settled. The combined effects of Irish light and living amidst the landscape and continuous history of a people who embraced the ancient and modern with equal vigor brought about a breakthrough and my first mature works (Baccanale series, 1979-84). In my second solo exhibition (Cork Arts Society Gallery, 1980), Hilary Pyle (art critic/historian and presently Director of the Yeats Museum, National Gallery of Art, Dublin) wrote an important piece about this show in the Irish Times (1980), and became an early advocate. After my show, I mounted an exhibition of Richard Callner's tapestries and gouaches at the same gallery.

Paul Waldo Schwartz had written The Hand and Eye of the Sculptor in the 60s. My copy falls open from use at the interview with Reg Butler. My chance to experience a conversation in person came in August 1981 when Butler came to a seminar for the Sculptors' Society of Ireland in Gorey, Wexford. We spoke about scale, and about the cycle of work and recognition that must occur if an artist is to grow. The recognition, encouragement and mentoring he provided had a permanent impact on my creative life. Before he died that year, he suggested that I bring works from my exhibition in Tanglewood, MA, back to Europe and approach several London galleries, saying that the work was "mature, universal and needed to be seen." Early in 1982, my visit to Rene Gimpel produced another very appreciated moment of recognition that lead to exhibiting nine works at Gimpel Fils in 1984.

Between Heaven and Earth was selected for Contemporary American Prints, on show from 1984-87 at the Ducal Palace of the American Ambassador in Leningrad, USSR. Thirty- eight artists including Diebenkorn, Frankenthaler, Judd, Lindner, Morely, Motherwell, Nevelson, and Rauschenberg were shown. The organizer later related that the Director of the Hermitage, Boris Piotrovsky, had visited the show, stopped before my work and commented, "Now that has weight. It matters." This was my first awareness of my work "meeting" someone and being "admitted."

In addition to my studio work, and in order to continue living in Ireland, I began a business in architectural restoration. Much of Ireland's rich architectural stock had not been restored in the years following the mass emigrations of the 50s. From 1978-86 my company was a leader in the restoration and contemporary integration of vernacular architecture, winning national awards for restoration, design, sign writing, gilding and color consultancy. I collaborated with architect Patrick Shaffrey, contributed guidelines, publications, and lectures to An Foras Forbartha (National Institute for Physical Planning and Construction Research) and lectured at all the colleges of art and design. RTE (Irish Television) filmed a Countrywide profile in 1981, and I was given the "Award for Outstanding Contribution to Architecture and Design" by Dr. Patrick Hillary, President of Ireland (1984). This work encompassed sick building syndrome, traffic flow, lighting, and correcting architectural features post construction. These public spaces became an extension of my studio, a spatial laboratory. By taking a deep look at the nature of the space, its use, and how people wanted to feel in that space, it was possible to return these buildings to a greater dignity, function and aesthetic. This was practical magic--experienced through the movement of form, space, color and light. v

My painting was developing as calligraphic monotypes. This technique pushed forward, was riskier, and accessed a more unconscious and universal imagery, while introducing me to the power of intention in mark making. In 1982 I began to experiment with projection to see my monotype images at their intended scale. I purchased Loughview House (1979). On the property within 30 feet of the house and studio, was one of County Clare's largest ring forts, Caheraphuca, over 2000 years old. Frequently in the 1980s I had accompanied a research group allowed entry to Newgrange megalithic site (5,300 years old) at Solstice to study the tumulus, its standing stones, passage and artifacts. Visiting the Boyne Valley and Tara often, I began a conscious study of sacred space, ritual, cultural memory and later, the written works of Mircea Eliade. Newgrange embodied mystery and intelligence--portraying a sophisticated, accomplished and inspiring culture.

I began to send works to exhibitions in Ireland and was awarded the First Prize for Invitation to White Nights at the First Fenderesky Gallery Open Exhibition (1987), in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Kent dur Russell, Director of the Arts Council Gallery of Belfast, was one of the jurors, and became a strong advocate for my work.

The Chester Beatty Library and Gallery of Oriental Art in Dublin was a place of frequent reflection and study. In 1984 I had researched the construction of my first artist's illustrated book, studying the library's copy of Charles d'Orleans by Matisse. In late 1988, Dr. Patricia Donlon, Trustee and Curator of Western Manuscripts, saw my book Spirit and Sense of an April Fool, and enthusiastically opened the collection of books and manuscripts to me. I wanted to study ways in which books were made, carried, viewed, as well as our relationship to their contents. Together, Dr. Donlon and I spent many months exploring Ethiopic prayer scrolls and satchel books, Japanese concertina albums, Burmese parabaiks and ancient Qur'ans, culminating in a presentation of my works at the Chester Beatty, along side several books and manuscripts (September, 1988). Dr. Donlon became Director of the National Library of Ireland, and the book that I had first brought to her, Spirit and Sense of an April Fool entered the Library's permanent collection in 1996. As my life became more nomadic in the early 1990s, I employed many of these portable book forms in a substantial part of my artistic output.v

In 1990, I returned to the U.S. and received the maximum Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Emergency Grant in 1991. At this time a 12-year retrospective of my work was being mounted by Lisa Tremper Hanover, Director at the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus (1991). Thanks to the generous loans from my European collectors, Gimpel Fils in London, and catalog essays from Kent dur Russell and Dr. Pat Donlon, the show was a complete survey and a popular success. I designed the exhibition installation, as I have done for all of my shows. The Berman Museum purchased Lovers (after Utamaro) from this exhibition for their permanent collection.

At the same time I started to explore quantum theory, studies of frequency, the effects of sound and human voiceprints, the effects of color vibration and the individual color light that is unique to each artist. There seemed to be a connection between artistic intention, theories and philosophies of ancient cultures, sacred spaces and the emerging quantum theories.

Imagining an exhibition in which a calligraphic human presence could inhabit a more timeless space, I mounted Tuatha de Danann: Lords of Light in Philip Johnson's newly built Frank Martin Gallery, Muhlenberg College (1993-94). This was the first attempt to realize my images at their intended scale. The title triptych from this show: Tuatha de Danann: Lords of Light, a wall book, consisting of three, six-foot-high canvases, joined the permanent collection of the Berman Museum of Art (1995). Justin Knecht documented this installation in his documentary film The Calligraphy of the Spirit at Temple University in 1993. In 1994 I married Justin and I gave birth to our son, Gabriel. I continued to curate and mount exhibitions: Marc Chagall, The Bible, Egner Memorial Chapel, Muhlenberg College (1993), and Alexander Calder at the Touraine, Philadelphia (1994).

Combining my skills with Justin Knecht's film, photography and technology expertise, we formed Art on View Inc. (1995-2000), producing interactive kiosks and award- winning internet sites. In Ireland I had designed businesses in real space; at AOV, I was designing for arts and commerce in cyberspace (Crayola.com, 2000). This was an important opportunity to graft on an awareness of technology and a new spatial paradigm, made possible through rapidly evolving information architecture.

In 1996 I had an opportunity to publicly thank four artists with whom I have had an apprentice or mentor relationship: Roger Steinhauer, Thomas Leabhart, Richard Callner, and Reg Butler. Shaking The Tree: L. Vandegrift Davala and Studio (Berman Museum) documented artistic lineage and shared knowledge through experience. A survey of my work from the 1990s along with samples of murals, performance documentation, paintings, and sculptures from these four masters were installed with work from recent apprentices in my studio.

In January 2003 I was commissioned to complete a sculptural ceiling installation for The Crayola Factory Museum, Two Rivers Landing, Easton, PA. The work, Celestial Circus, was undertaken during a 6-month Artist-in-Residency at Crayola, with the assistance of art interns, and filmed for PBS TV. I had chosen to work in large space, 3-dimensionally, with brushed color, again using this experience as if it were a laboratory extension of my own studio.

Fresh from this experience, I began building scale models and full-scale installations merging painting, light, and place for the first time (2003). The projections and installations I had envisioned in 1982 were now possible. Traveling to Spain in 2003 I visited Chillida's Wind Combs, a masterpiece of resonance and place, and in Ireland in 2004 I renewed my connection to the sanctity of built environments, at Caheraphuca, Cragganowen and Quinn Abbey.

In 2004 a copy of Procession: 12 Women (which was the model for the Movable Bookroom) entered the Museum of Modern Art's Franklin Furnace Collection, and the Tuatha De Danann: Lords of Light and Masters of Time architectural model was conceived and built. The satchel book Remember: Fear Lent Wings joined the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2005, as I began to develop the "My Dear Charmides" book rooms and portal light installations.

I see the relationship and progression from handheld and "housed" books (in satchels, Plexiglas cases, and books made to be worn) to architectural books to be entered (wall books, book rooms) and the portal light projections (incantations and the "human books" which can read themselves), which endure through renewal.

In June of 2006, I returned with my family to live in Ireland.

L. Vandegrift Davala