‘INSTAR’ by Pam Longobardi is on view at Sandler Hudson Gallery via August 3. (Pictures by Isadora Pennington)
Award-winning up to date artist, environmentalist, artwork activist and professor are simply a few of Pam Longobardi’s titles.
A professor of artwork at Georgia State College since 1997, Longobardi’s intensive CV contains quite a few artist residencies, awards and particular recognitions and a protracted record of group and solo exhibits spanning practically 4 a long time. Her present exhibition, INSTAR (on view at Sandler Hudson Gallery via August 1) includes a number of abstracted compositions on copper and paper alongside a collection of micro-collages. On the gallery’s entrance desk, magnifying glasses can be found to anybody who desires to take a better have a look at the works on the partitions.
A deep and lasting love for the atmosphere has lengthy been on the coronary heart of Longobardi’s creative follow. Rising up in proximity to the seaside in New Jersey because the daughter of an ocean lifeguard and diving champion, she gained a novel perspective on the ability and majesty of our planet’s oceans. Witnessing the aftermath of the plastic waste that washed up on ocean shores all over the world impressed her to contemplate humanity’s impression on the planet via discarded gadgets and have become central to her artwork activism.
The breadth of Longobardi’s creative profession spans mediums together with images, sculpture, assemblage, collage, portray and different processes and is united by a shared concern for the planet’s well-being. She considers the position of people in nature and conveys that relationship via additive processes of layered paper, sculptural compositions of discovered objects and the interactions of paints and corrosive liquids.
Longobardi’s father was a biochemist who labored for Union Carbide Firm, and he or she stated that seeing him concerned with a few of the earliest developments of plastic merchandise sparked her curiosity. When he introduced dwelling experiments and demonstrated them on her kitchen counter, a younger Longobardi was fascinated by the method. “I ended up getting a level in science as a result of, for me, it’s like artwork and science are two sides of the identical coin or possibly two halves of the mind.”
To comply with his goals, Longobardi’s father moved the household right down to Atlanta to begin a brand new enterprise, albeit a short-lived ardour. Her father then held a collection of fascinating jobs and hobbies, changing into a stockbroker, a hang-glider pilot and even opening his personal mountaineering college in his early 60s. “He was a dreamer,” she informed me. “He was like, intrepid, ? Nothing ever received in his means.”
After graduating with a BFA from the College of Georgia, Longobardi’s path led her out West, the place she earned her MFA at Montana State College. Throughout this part of her life, she was married to a cowboy and lived on a big sprawling ranch, however she felt a constant, deep craving to get again to science. “It was actually isolating, but it surely was type of cool, too,” she stated of the expertise.
The following part of her life discovered Longobardi in San Francisco, working at an experimental printmaking workshop, earlier than heading again to the Southeast and touchdown a educating job on the College of Tennessee in Knoxville. “Appalachia wasn’t my factor,” she stated. “I used to be supplied a school place at GSU and ended up shifting down.”
As a professor, she discovered a house for herself at Georgia State College, the place she has been educating ever since. “I really like the folks, I really like the scholars. That’s why I’ve stayed there so lengthy, ,” she informed me. “It couldn’t be higher, actually. My colleagues are incredible.”
Trying round on the works on view in INSTAR, Longobardi shared that she considers herself a conceptual artist who’s “deeply embedded in supplies and materiality,” and her fascination with chemistry is probably most evident in her copper items. The compositions are organically born via a collection of chemical reactions, the vast majority of the weather in them being numerous patinas.
“It’s like wild nature, uncontrolled,” stated Longobardi of the follow, noting that she enjoys utilizing supplies which can be industrial and never meant for fantastic artwork alongside conventional artwork supplies to create these works. “It’s type of like the concept of paving over paradise, as a result of as soon as I put these down, I can by no means return to what it was earlier than.” From the impulsive, experimental method to these first chemical reactions to the later, extra considerate additions of tiny figures and miniature timber, the method represents a type of collision of each forces and concepts.
“To start with, I actually strove for this one world the place nature was untouched, after which as people have developed in my lifetime, we had been simply coming in and nearly overriding. So there’s this collision now.” Although skilled in lifelike oil portray, as of late Longobardi finds no motivation to work in sluggish realism and as a substitute prefers expressive artwork composed in a extra fast and frenetic means. “Proper now, I’m not involved in doing that; I don’t really feel like I’ve the time. I really feel like there’s an urgency to do these items,” she stated.
Although the small scale and cautious management evident in Longobardi’s foreign money items is in distinct distinction to the massive, free, paper-based and copper items in INSTAR, they signify one other exploration of worth via artwork. She enjoys amassing defunct and devalued foreign money from different nations after which reducing it up and thoroughly layering it into miniature vistas. “I think about it like a discovered encyclopedia of worth,” she stated, noting that the imagery on cash from numerous nations can point out the values of their origins. Some characteristic nature, animals and landscapes, whereas others could have figures, buildings and different symbolism.
By reducing up the foreign money and assembling it into new compositions, Longobardi is enjoying with their worth — as soon as minimize, the cash can not be used for its meant goal — however after being reconfigured as fantastic artwork, the works tackle an altogether new worth on the partitions of a gallery.
In the end, the works on show at INSTAR could be seen as a continuation of the concepts Longobardi has been exploring via different media, together with sculptural reclaimed plastic works included in final 12 months’s Atlanta Artwork Honest as a part of her Drifters Challenge. It’s a dialog that’s not completed but — and will by no means be — concerning humanity’s impression on the atmosphere as seen via plastics improvement through industrial chemical reactions and the inevitable waste that accompanies these developments.
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Isadora Pennington is senior editor of artwork + design and dance. An skilled author and photographer with a deep love for the humanities, Isadora based the Sketchbook publication with Tough Draft Atlanta in 2022. She can also be president of the Avondale Arts Alliance and director of the Avondale Arts Heart.
