About Me.
Lisa Aerin Collett was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1976. Raised on the west side of the valley in Kearns, always having a love for art and an attraction to Master works, it was in French class in 8th grade that she discovered her effortless talent. In Tenth grade she choose to do homeschool, and took an art class at Kearns High, where her time was filled with learning how to paint in her basement bedroom.
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Marrying young, not realizing what her new life would bring, her art education and career was soon placed on hold. After ten years she found herself divorced and back in her basement bedroom with three kids in tow. She finished her education at the University of Utah, where she found that she excelled in facilitation positions, and mentoring other students. She was always at the top of her art classes, and became well known within the department, and was asked to instigate and reform the Painting and Drawing Student Association, asked to help some of the professors with lectures, and then later in her last semester was voted to be in charge of the final BFA exhibit for graduating students.
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Experimenting with materials and techniques has always been a passion, and an intrinsically part of her process and value system, always viewing art as a scientific method. Which extends to her core spiritual themed works. Experimenting intellectually with the unknown or unfamiliar, not being bothered to conform to the traditions of her culture, using art as a way to explore her own spiritual path and her spiritual path informing her art.
Aerin's passion for using art as a form of communication and viewing it as a language that only the subconscious can really interpret, she loves to utilize historically symbolic meaning to continue the language established by history, as well as creating new language and concepts associated with religion, and theosophical ideas, drawing on the pseudepigrapha and apocryphal works to discover alternate truths and possibilities to Christianity that are uncommonly explored, making extensive studies of the gnostic, Essene, and forgotten works an important part of her process.
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She has received Utah statewide recognition within the art community, especially associated with her explorative images of a Heavenly Mother. She has won awards associated with the LDS Church and the Springville Art Museum.
Education
2010-2013
Bachelors of Fine Art
University of Utah
2013- Curator/Facilitator of the University of Utah BFA exhibit
2012- Drawing facilitator for the Leonardo Museum during their Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit
2012- Creator/Curator of the "Escalating Density" Portraits of John Erickson exhibit, coordinating works from alumni and current students
2011- Featured Artist Facilitator for the Leonardo Museum
2010-2011- Coordinator/Facilitator of the figure drawing sessions for the Painting and Drawing Student Association
2010-2012- Reformed the Painting and Drawing Student Association, became President, and was awarded grants for specific programs promoting extra curricular activities.
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2005-2007
Attended
BYU-Idaho
2005-2006- Art Tutor
Studied under Leon Parson
Considered top of my class and admired by other students
1995-2001
Attended
Utah State University-2001
Ricks College- 1999
Salt Lake Community College- 1995-1997
Awards
-"The Kingdom of Heaven" won first place in the 2016 Springville Museum of Art Spring Salon Spiritual and Religious Art of Utah
-"The Kingdom of Heaven" won a Merit Award at the 10th International LDS Art Competition in 2015.
STORY OF PROCESS EVOLUTION
While she attended BYU-Idaho, the professors who had the greatest influence on her were Leon Parson, and Wade Huntsman. Learning first to experiment with different mediums from Mr. Huntsman, he opened her imagination within the possibilities which she would be able to communicate. While her drawing skills, specifically figure drawing, were exceptional, Mr. Huntsman taught multiple different transferring processes that would help her speed up her composing abilities, which Mr. Parson recognized early on and encouraged and mentored her to understand exactly how to manipulate the viewers eye.
The U Experience
After her divorce she returned to school and attended the University of Utah where she met John Erickson, and he became one of her most influential mentors and friends. Early he saw her ability and while he mentioned to the class to use unusual mediums such as highlighters and Sharpies, he left Aerin to her own devices to see where she would go without interference, which allowed her to remove the limitations the institution places upon the mind. Experimenting not with just medium but with surface, created a boldness of confidence which allowed her to be fearless in her mark making decisions and skill. Soon she became well known for her precision, speed, and creative boldness of materials. As her confidence grew, pushing her boundaries became part of her process. To discover unknown and unusual practices that would allow her to communicate layers within layers as time went on. Remembering a techniques she learned while at BYU-Idaho, she soon began to incorporate clear packaging tape to separate layers of arbitrary texture, pattern, blocked in images, gestures and lines.
PACKAGING TAPE
As Aerin left the U, she began a series of work that was exclusively birds as she learned more about how to work with the packaging tape and collage layers. They were very popular in the gallery she won a scholarship through, Alderwood Fine Art, where she sold all her bird creations. The longer she worked with the materials, the better she was able to judge how to use multiple materials, and what materials worked best.
The process included building up layers with latex, papers and tape and sanding each layer down so the previous layer would show through, with the final layer done with oil paint to incorporate more fine details, and then sealed with epoxy resin.
COMPLEX COMPOSITIONS
As I became more comfortable working with the packing tape technique, I felt it was time to incorporate it into larger, more complicated images. One of the things I changed during this period, was to remove the collage elements because they interfered with the adhesion of the packing tape. I also started to incorporate the use of Resin more as a way to solidify the longevity and encasing of the packaging tape.
I enjoyed the freedom of the visual layer that was created by adding an element like the tape, that while transparent, created a new surface that could be manipulated while still maintaining elements of the previous layer. Or as you can see in the image to your right, the conceptual aspect of a story within a story the transparency provided, which gave an element of layered separation, integration, and symbolic conceptualism.
TRANSITIONAL
PAST TO PRESENT
Having an abundant of figure drawings, and trying to incorporate more into my life the things that resonate, I decided to start incorporating them into a new body of work. Pushing the boundaries of working with transparent material, having more capacity to show off my line work and raw mark making skills, creating a fresh aesthetic, while maintaining the layers of thought combined with layers of material, textures and imagery that correlate to the subjects I am interested in exploring and resonate with.
