Lisa’s first major public art installation was a collaborative piece with Jennifer Moses titled “Redefining Open Space” – an installation of 5000 sq. ft. of sod on the sidewalk of the Summer Street Bridge, creating a seamless carpet of grass. It represented a poetic meeting of two definitions of open space: the city’s sidewalk and the neighborhood’s park. The large scale of the piece created a formal beauty that affected the public consciousness and drew attention to this paradox.
Since then her pieces, both collaborative and solo have been two-fold. Each piece can be taken at face value – enjoyed by young and old for what is merely visible, but also they can be challenging with multiple meanings. You don’t have to “get it” to enjoy the pieces, but they are thought provoking and timely. While the pieces stand on their own with whimsy and creativity there is a subtext dealing with contemporary issues of isolation, privacy, public space, the economy and the issues that face our neighborhoods.
Public art doesn’t always have to be serious with deep underlying meaning, but it should capture the imagination in quirky unexpected ways and places. It should make you smile, or think, or dream, or all of the above.
Paintings:
Lisa’s paintings explore themes of color, surface, space and edges. The subject matter is a twist on the urban landscape – a minimal approach to architecture using subtle combinations of color and form to create spatial ambiguities and unpredictable shifts of foreground and background. Thick layers are built up with a mixture of oil paint and cold wax medium. The wax provides a matte finish that retains a translucency allowing light to pass through the multiple layers. The mixture is applied with a palette knife and is often scratched back into to reveal variations in color from below. These subtle transitions in color and texture form edges that appear and disappear, serving to transport the structural elements from the mundane and physical to a symbolic or psychological realm.
Her work is in public and private collections including the new Mariott Residence Inn in Fort Point, Boston.
Bio:
Lisa Greenfield is an Artist and Urban Planner who has a BA in Fine Arts from Brandeis University and a Masters Degree from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She has been an active member of the Fort Point Arts Community for many years. She has received many grants and awards including the St. Botolph Club Foundation 2011 Emerging Artist Award, and grants from the Browne Fund and NEFA.
