Laini Nemett
Laini Nemett makes representational drawings, collage, and large-scale oil paintings to explore man-made and natural architecture. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Queens Council on the Arts, and the Fulbright Foundation, and has participated in artist residencies at Yaddo, The Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, Hambidge Center, UCross Foundation, Jentel, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Cill Rialaig Arts Center in Ireland, and the Alfred & Trafford Klots International Residency in France.
Nemett has exhibited her work nationally and abroad, including in solo exhibitions at the Paul Mahder Gallery in Healdsburg, CA: the Guilin Art Museum in China, the Mandeville Gallery at Union College in Schenectady, NY; and the Institute for Contemporary Art at Platform Gallery in Baltimore, MD. Recent group exhibitions include the Albany International Airport Gallery, Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Adelphi University, YoungArts Headquarters Gallery in Miami, and Collar Works in Troy, NY. She holds an MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting at Maryland Institute College of Art and a dual BA from Brown University in Visual Arts and History of Art & Architecture. Nemett lives and works in Schenectady, NY, where she is Associate Professor of Drawing and Painting at Union College.
Can you tell us a bit about the process of making your work?
I work between small paintings on panel (8x8 or 10x10) that I paint from life, and larger canvases (between 4-9 feet) often based on a collage of multiple images. The small ones typically involve me setting up somewhere with my portable easel for a quick one-day painting – in the desert, in the woods, or looking out a window in my house in colder weather. The larger paintings usually develop after I've seen something that I can't get out of my head and need to figure out on canvas, which most recently comes from some surreal-looking geology of the American Southwest. I’ll lay in a larger painting with hardware store chip brushes in one day and then spend a month or so working it up until it feels like it conveys some fraction of the immersive space that inspired it.
Tell us more about your work in the show.
The two paintings in this show came from my first trip to visit the slot canyons and ancient cliff dwellings of the Four Corners region. Jacal Corner is based on a series of 8 x 8” paintings of details of a 49-unit cliff dwelling from the 13th century – sort of an ancient apartment building. The “jacal” wall was hand-formed with mud over logs and twigs. Unlike Mesa Verde or some other restored ancient dwelling sites, this one and hundreds of others hidden throughout Cedar Mesa in SE Utah are still exactly as they were left, mostly untouched for over 800 years. I painted contemporary architecture for a long time, and was amazed to see how Ancestral Puebloans employed the land itself as a basic structure for building, like using the rock overhang created from millennia of erosion as a roof and back wall. I’ve been exploring the wild landforms in this region and using them as elements of architecture in collages coupled with actual built walls, roofs, or beams. Cliff Dwellers is a painting based on a collage of a slot canyon in Northern Arizona and Wapatki National Monument, a nearby ancient pueblo.
Installation view from Pause at the Crowell and West Galleries, Union College; Where Water Runs Through Rocks 1 & 2, oil on linen, 80 x 56 in each.
What are some references you draw upon in your work? Are there any themes in particular that you like to focus on when creating?
I've always been inspired by architecture and what we can learn from the ways different people live. The past 3 years or so, my work has moved past contemporary architecture to focus more on natural structures that can become shelters. Many of my paintings look at the ways humans intervene in the landscape to build our homes, as well as the ways the land can reclaim these spaces. Nature itself has been the most important reference in my recent work.
Where are some of your favorite spaces that support contemporary art or design? Now that the art has an online presence, has that changed?
There are so many inspiring art spaces right now, especially in the upstate area where I live. One that I’ve followed for about 6 years since showing there in its early days is Collar Works in Troy, NY, which now hosts a residency program as well. Artport Kingston, Stoneleaf Retreat, LABspace, Wassaic, and Pamela Salisbury Gallery have all also been important hubs of the upstate artist community. All of these places have great Instagram presences, too, which lets me see a lot of great work even when we can’t venture out as much, though obviously nothing compares to seeing the work and gathering together in these spaces in person.
Moon House Portals, oil on linen on panel, 8 x 8 in each
Who are some of your favorite artists? Or who has been inspirational recently?
Lois Dodd, Diebenkorn, Giotto, Morandi, and Frankenthaler are the first that come to mind at this moment. I’m currently reading Ninth Street Women, all insanely inspirational painters, and Hour of Land by Terry Tempest Williams, another frequent influence of mine, particularly for how she thinks and writes about the land and our interaction with it.
Do you have any shows coming up? Anything else you would like to share?
I will have a few recent paintings in Shimmer at the Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge, MA from April 1 - May 1. I also have some paintings on view at the Paul Mahder Gallery in Northern California.
Laini Nemett’s work is included in our show “We Are Still in Eden,” January 7th - Febuary 28th, 2022. Visit her website here or on Instagram @laini.nemett.