LISA RASMUSSEN
ARTIST STATEMENT

Caol ‘Ait (thin places)

An Exploration through Paintings, Photography, and Installation

My art is a metaphysical journey of discovery. Ever since childhood I have been fascinated with the liminal ---- the neither here nor there, the betwixt or the in-between. I found it to be a realm of pure possibility. The ancient Celts called this state Caol ‘ait or “thin places”, were the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds merge. I have found that through my creative process I can pass through a type of threshold that allows me to enter this realm of consciousness, where one can explore the interflow between soul and matter and between time and eternity.
This allure with “thin places” has also led me to explore transformative psychology and my own personal shadow through dream work and Jungian analysis. My art is a recorded event of my deep interest in mysticism and the natural world, as well as a passageway into my own mythical inversion of reality. It is my deep exploration into non-ordinary reality and the mysteries of the unknown.
A key element in my process is the study and travel to ancient cultures and sacred sites whose animistic worldview encompassed a belief in a magical Other World. My paintings or portals are visual archives that penetrate my unconscious. My surfaces are painted over layers of symbols and forms, recalling cave walls and ritual chambers. While creating I employ my two mental allies, instinct and intuition, to create a canvas of chaos and order
My earthworks are ritual installations that are created around individual trees in the Bay Area. This work has been inspired by the Kalapturu tree (wishing tree) of India and by my ancestral connection to the ancient spirituality of Celts and Vikings, who also worshipped trees. In my earth works, I activate my belief in animism and the honoring of ancestors. They speak to the timeless nature of ritual and place.
With photography I capture moments in the sacred sites that I have traveled to. In ordinary reality I photograph sacred moments of light that exemplify the beauty and magic of the moment. The Hands of Creation series manifested from my teaching of art to vulnerable and emotionally troubled children at a mental health agency in the Bay Area. n Ideally, in my work, I seek to honor that state of the soul where the artist/child experiences the ultimate liberation, which is the personal act of creation itself.
Although, these works are diverse in medium they are all interconnected and are unified with a common goal of transcendence and the resurrection of my symbiotic connection to the creative universe. I believe that art is intrinsic to the nurturance of the human spirit and that art’s true essence is transformative. Ideally, in all my work I seek to honor that state of the soul when the artist experiences the ultimate liberation, which is the personal act of creation itself.

Lisa Rasmussen
415.377.4956
Sufiraz@aol.com
Artist Resume

Gallery Representation

January 08- Present
Gallery Studio 333, Sausalito , CA

Exhibitions
June 2008
MFA Graduate Exhibition,
Arts and Consciousness Gallery, JFKU Berkeley Campu

October 23 - November 15, 2007
MFA EXHIBITION
CAOL ÁIT (thin places)
An exploration through paintings, photography, and installation
Arts and Consciousness Gallery, JFKU Berkeley Campus

January 2007, 2006, 2005
2X2 Exhibition
Arts and Consciousness Gallery, JFKU Berkeley Campus

March 2005
The Dreaming Mind, The Conscious Mind
NIAD Art Center and John F. Kennedy University A & C Department
A collaborative exhibition between the NIAD Art Center and the John F. Kennedy University Arts & Consciousness Department. (NIAD also known as the National Institute of Arts and Disabilities.)
Arts and Consciousness Gallery, JFKU Berkeley Campus

Fall 2002
ASD Dream Art Exhibition
International Dream Conference, Boston Massachusetts

November 2001
Ovaria a women’s artist event at The Space, Emeryville, California

August 2001
Cabrillo Music Art & Wine Festival, Santa Cruz, California

March 2000 - present
Yoga Tree, San Francisco, California

October 1999
Raw Organica, San Francisco, California

PUBLICATIONS
Winter 2003
Dream Time-Cover artist and article

Fall 2002
Dream Time-Cover artist

January 2003
Electric DreamsCover Artist for Electric Dreams e-zine at www.dreamgate.com
Volume 10 Issue 1 January 2003

September 2002
Shadow Boxes and Shrines - ART BOOK
Rockport Publishers

TEACHING
January 2006-present
Founder
Transformational Art Teacher for emotionally disturbed children –Lincoln Child Center, Oakland

2002-2003
Transformational Art Rogers Alternative High School for at-risk teens

Awards:
Outstanding Student of the Year
John F. Kennedy University
Graduate Program:
Holistic Studies-excerpt
Five years ago, you entered the Department of Arts & Consciousness as a student in the Transformative Arts program. As your creative process unfolded, your paintings grew ever more compelling. By the end of three years, you transferred to the MFA program to more deeply engage your artwork. During this period, you continued to develop a program in transformative arts for clients at the Lincoln Child Center in Oakland. Your program bridged the gap between art as a transformative tool and art as a form of cultural expression. Your Lincoln Child Care Center students exhibited their work in a Sausalito Gallery and were the focus of an annual benefit for the Center. Because of your dedicated and creative work with the students at Lincoln Child Center, they have experienced the invaluable joy of self-expression and the all-important process of being seen in their fuller humanity. You have been a profound, transformative influence in their lives.

As an artist, your work has gone far beyond the limits of traditional painting. Your final MFA Exhibition entitled Caol Ait (Thin Spaces) reveals the full scope and power of your artwork, moving beyond the genre of painting into installation and environmental art, as well as movement, ritual and sculpture. In your teaching and in your artwork you celebrate the realization that art lives at the edges of life and spirit. You explore and then dissolve the boundaries between inner and outer, self and other and in so doing represent the highest ideals of Holistic Studies. You are an outstanding individual, and we are proud to nominate you as Student of the Year. Congratulations and best wishes for continued success.

Peter M. Rojcewicz, PHD
Dean, School of Holistic Studies