Second Show at Butchers Daughter: Cutting-Edge work by Lisa Marie Thalhammer

Artemsia-Gentileschi,
self portrait

At a young age artist Lisa Marie Thalhammer drew from her personal life experience to create
unique artistic expressions. It’s no wonder that one of her first influences was the 17th century painter Artemisia Gentileschi. At a time when women were not allowed into art academies, Gentileschi was trained by her father. She went on to become an accomplished painter known for casting women as the main characters of her narratives.

Thalhammer’s exhibit at the Butchers Daughter Gallery in Ferndale called “Lizards Live” reads as a visual memoir reporting her response to lurid activities in the parking lot of her parents’ truck stop diner. A waitress working in the family business, the artist became privy to an underground culture of sorts involving truck drivers and the prostitutes who hung out in the lot to service them.

The series, expressed through the technique of collage, contains body parts of women cut from fashion magazines, along with symbols of hand-painted rainbows. The pieces reveal the process of working through complex emotions and ideas attached to religious, social, political and psychological issues. The work began when Thalhammer graduated from art school and her parents decided to sell the diner. She set out to

Detail of Boxer Girl mural

photograph the truck stop to document what this part of her life had meant to her.

Thalhammer was raised as a Catholic and points to the religion’s ideology of polarizing women’s sexuality either as whore or virgin. Through her work she seeks to erase boundaries and raise consciousness making the invisible subculture of truck drivers and the women who entertain them visible. The artist contrasts the roles of the women and truck drivers who frequented the diner. This idea is expressed as a metaphor in taking apart the female body and reconfiguring it in the form of “lizard-like creatures that are not completely human but still beautiful.”

Other images contain this female-lizard creature on car hoods, poised for the journey. Thalhammer refers again to the aspect of metaphor in the work speaking of her idea of “romanticizing the journey.”

We all struggle with some element of our lives and experience our own sense of the struggle on the “highway” or “journey” that we find ourselves on. The examination of this universal journey allows viewers to walk away from the show with their own interpretation and feelings.

Lizard wStars & Valentino glasses

Other works in the show include mixed-media images from Thalhammer’s acclaimed “Boxer Women” series, a large-scale pastel on paper, and a cut paper animation on DVD.
For your holiday shopping, there are t-shirts designed by the artist for sale and postcards of a piece Thalhammer did of Michelle Obama for the 2009 exhibit “Manifest Hope” curated by artist Shepard Fairey. Fairey designed the famous poster of Obama that ended up on the cover of Time magazine. Oh, by the way…Thalhammer was the only artist in that show to portray Michelle Obama rather than the president himself.

The exhibit “Lizards Live” at the Butchers Daughter Gallery runs until November 25th.
www.thebutchersdaughter.com

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