Emerging Artists

The Daily Palette celebrates the talents of MA and MFA students as they move toward graduation!

LOUISE FISHER
Inside the Camera Obscura, lithograph on Arnhem 1618, 11" x 14", 2017

Louise Fisher is a Phoenix-based artist and MFA candidate in printmaking at Arizona State University. Louise grew up on a farm in her homestate of Iowa, where she obtained her BFA degree with honors from the University of Northern Iowa. Since then, she has exhibited her work locally and nationally. Most recently she has been included in the IMPRINT TWO 2018 National Biennial Print Invitational Exhibition in Austin. Fisher is also the 2018 recipient of the prestigious Southern Graphics Council International Graduate Fellowship Award. In her work, Louise explores ideas of ephemerality, energetic transformation and life cycles using time-based mediums such as video and photography as well as the layering and repetitive action of printmaking. Her current body of work focuses on artificial light and its effect on biorhythms. Through research and personal experiences underneath both urban and rural skies, Fisher's artwork touches scientific and poetic aspects of this issue.

In her own words:

My artwork is a process of translating memory and experience into printed
ephemera. I am fascinated by the flow of time and how it manifests in nature, our
lives and our bodies. My current research is focused on artificial light and how it
disrupts biorhythms and the larger ecosystem. My experiences are informed by my
childhood growing up in rural Iowa and camping off-the-grid, where nights are
quiet, dark and starry. Living in a large light-polluted city sparked my interest in
learning about chronobiology - the study of time in the body - and how light
pollution alters cyclic behaviors such as sleeping in both animals and humans.

The most crucial project addressing light pollution in my work is the Circadian
series. These photographs are created using and a pinhole camera and darkroom
processes. A lensless camera is placed near me as I sleep for several hours, exposing the artificial light in the environment onto the light-sensitive film in the camera. Light leaking into the simple aperture acts as a metaphor the pineal gland, a part of the brain which releases the chemistry necessary for sleep and is activated by darkness. The result is a 8 hour photograph with vivid color and soft focus, producing a dream-like image. These photographs are a direct experiment with light, and I use printmaking to take them out of the traditional photographic realm and experiment with alternative substrates. Since beginning this project, I have been exploring the ways to print and display the work - including digital printing, screenprinting and color separations in photolithography.

Louise's website