Lisa Marie Barber

Artist Statement

For most of my professional career, I’ve created large-scale ceramic installations where passive figures occupy dense arrangements as if centerpieces to improvised shrines. While my aesthetic and process have stayed the same, I have cropped down the work over the years, making it easier to transport, exhibit, and store.

These assemblages, and all my recent artwork, encompass my imagined, decorative conceptions of home, gardens, peacefulness, playfulness, and celebration.

My aesthetic sensibility is rooted in Mexican Folk Art and the Latin American Catholic shrines of my heritage and upbringing. For most of my childhood in Southern Arizona, this was the only artwork I knew and I always practiced making creations in similar ways. Whether it was through my naive interpretation or some forgotten informal training I received as a child, I came to believe that ornamentation and excess denoted value and importance. Materials weren’t required to be “fine” and tools were expected to be simple. Evidence of “the hand” (the maker) was never something to be self-conscious of, or craftily removed. Throughout my life, I’ve remained loyal to this style of making.

My work comes from a mental space that values solitude, simplicity, happiness, and independence. My artworks, while often perceived as busy, complex compositions, are very simple in concept and method. At their heart, they serve as personal meditations on the ease, beauty, and wonder that can outline every day.

— Lisa Marie Barber