LISE SILVA GOMES

Artist in Residence: NOVEMBER 2023 - JANUARY 2024

“Love is the bridge between you and everything.” - Rumi

Love Maps delves into the theory that childhood experiences cast a map within the mind to finding love. The colors, faces, feelings, sounds and shapes that compose the mise-en-scene of our poignant early memories become markers on our paths to love. As we come of age and discover our sense of belonging and purpose, we navigate our adult lives led by those signposts. Although traditionally this theory focused on romantic love, Lise Silva Gomes explores an expansive concept of love that includes close friendships, communal belonging, objects and ambiances that bring intrinsic joy, as well as the roles, vocations and rituals that give deep personal fulfillment. Our markers of love, woven in an ecstatic quilt, offer a reflection of who we are.

Observing the dream space of her mind, Lise finds childhood nostalgia of the 80s and 90s in situ with unexpected objects of past and present, suspended together, casting mysterious shadows as objects hidden within larger objects resemble a Polly Pocket of portals to smaller worlds. Puzzling shapes and maze-like visuals recall divination games called upon for guidance (“he loves me, he loves me not”, tarot cards, Magic 8 ball, and folded paper ‘fortune tellers’) as well as the pastel children’s toys devised to lead girls toward prescribed concepts of love. 

Drawing upon the equally nostalgic quality of two very different textures- fabric and solid clear acrylic— and incorporating the printing techniques honed by Local Language, the Love Maps collection utilizes dimension and texture to a surreal effect. Pieces include six dream-like visions printed both on and beneath the surface of acrylic slabs, treated as oracle cards offering mysterious guidance, a large chessboard symbolizing the negotiations made within relationships, and several surreal sculptural pieces. Love Maps inspires an intentional and playful envisioning of love, an introspective check-in that unlocks childhood memories. An invitation to love that whispers, “What you seek is seeking you.”

“At night, I open the window and ask the moon to come and press its face against mine. Breathe into me. Close the language-door and open the love-window. The moon won't use the door, only the window." -Rumi 

Lise Silva Gomes is an artist and author based in Oakland, California (Lise is a Portuguese spelling pronounced exactly like “Lizzie”.) Through fiber art, painting, writing and visualization, her work honors dreaming as the language of intuition. As a self taught artist with a background in sociology, she considers visual archetypes in our culture to be a compelling study of the collective consciousness and societal messaging. 

Evoking mysterious symbols and familiar objects suspended in expansive landscapes of color, Gomes explores the space where we process memories and desires. Currently focused on digital painting, she creates surreal scenes of dream logic that unlock childhood memories with nostalgic symbols of pop culture, color studies, and femme aesthetics. Her digital paintings have been developed into textile prints for clothing brands, licensed for book covers, and innovatively shown as transparencies in nostalgic movie theater light boxes in a gallery setting.

While drawing and painting have been mainstays since her childhood, fiber art in all its diverse and intertwining iterations also holds an important place in her creative process. After years of creating one-of-a-kind fiber jewelry and wall-hangings for both gallery and retail spaces, Gomes authored Sacred Knots: Create, Adorn, and Transform Through the Art of Knotting (2020), published by Roost Books.  The tactile nature of fiber and the meditative insight of its slow craft offer a respite where she can develop concepts and explore the convergence of color and texture. Her digital magazine Wovenutopia celebrates the subversive, femme legacy of fiber art.  Currently she is working in appliqué and soft sculpture.

In addition to her personal art practice, she teaches workshops, writes and speaks on approaches to building a personally authentic and community-grounded creative practice.