‘INSTAR’ by Pam Longobardi is on view at Sandler Hudson Gallery by way of August 3. (Pictures by Isadora Pennington)
Award-winning modern artist, environmentalist, artwork activist and professor are simply a few of Pam Longobardi’s titles.
A professor of artwork at Georgia State College since 1997, Longobardi’s intensive CV consists of quite a few artist residencies, awards and particular recognitions and an extended record of group and solo reveals spanning practically 20 years. Her present exhibition, INSTAR (on view at Sandler Hudson Gallery by way of August 3) includes a choice of abstracted compositions on copper, a number of works on paper and a collection of micro-collages. On the gallery’s entrance desk, magnifying glasses can be found to anybody who desires to take a more in-depth have a look at the works on the partitions.
A deep and lasting love for the surroundings has lengthy been on the coronary heart of Longobardi’s creative follow. Rising up in proximity to the seashore in New Jersey because the daughter of an ocean lifeguard and diving champion, she gained a novel perspective on the facility and majesty of our planet’s oceans. Witnessing the aftermath of the plastic waste that washed up on close by shores impressed her to contemplate humanity’s impression on the planet by way of discarded objects and have become central to her artwork activism.
The breadth of Longobardi’s creative profession spans mediums together with pictures, sculpture, assemblage, collage, portray and various processes and is united by a shared concern for the planet’s well-being. She considers the position of people in nature and conveys that relationship by way of additive processes of layered paper, sculptural compositions of discovered objects and the interactions of paints and corrosive liquids.
Longobardi’s father was a biochemist who labored for Union Carbide Firm, and he or she stated that seeing him concerned with a number of the earliest developments of plastic merchandise sparked her curiosity. When he introduced residence experiments and demonstrated them on her kitchen counter, a younger Longobardi was fascinated by the method. “I ended up getting a level in science as a result of, for me, it’s like artwork and science are two sides of the identical coin or possibly two halves of my very own mind — or one thing like that.”
To comply with his desires, Longobardi’s father moved the household all the way down to Atlanta to start out a brand new enterprise, albeit a short-lived ardour. Her father then held a collection of fascinating jobs and hobbies, turning into a stockbroker, a hang-glider pilot and even opening his personal mountaineering college in 1960. “He was a dreamer,” she advised me. “He was like, intrepid, you recognize? Nothing ever received in his manner.”
After graduating with a BFA from the College of Georgia, Longobardi’s path led her out West, the place she earned her MFA at Montana State College. Throughout this section of her life, she was married to a cowboy and lived on a big sprawling ranch, however she felt a constant, deep craving to get again to science. “It was actually isolating, however it was sort of cool, too,” she stated of the expertise.
The following section of her life discovered Longobardi in San Francisco, working in experimental printmaking, earlier than heading again to the Southeast and touchdown a educating job on the College of Tennessee in Knoxville. “Appalachia wasn’t my factor,” she stated. “I landed an interview at GSU and ended up transferring down.”
As a professor, she discovered a house for herself at Georgia State College, the place she has been educating ever since. “I like the folks, I like the scholars. That’s why I’ve stayed there so lengthy, you recognize,” she advised me. “It couldn’t be higher, actually. My colleagues are incredible.”
Wanting round on the works on view in INSTAR, Longobardi shared that she considers herself a conceptual artist who’s “deeply embedded in supplies and materiality,” and her fascination with chemistry is maybe most evident in her copper items. The compositions are organically born by way of a collection of chemical reactions, nearly all of the weather in them being numerous patinas.
“It’s like wild nature, uncontrolled,” stated Longobardi of the follow, noting that she enjoys utilizing supplies which might be industrial and never supposed for wonderful artwork to create these works. “It’s form of like the concept of paving over paradise, as a result of as soon as I put these down, I can by no means return to what it was earlier than.” From the impulsive, experimental strategy to these first chemical reactions to the later, extra considerate additions of tiny figures and miniature timber, the method represents a sort of collision of each forces and concepts.
“At first, I actually strove for this one world the place nature was untouched, after which as people have developed in my lifetime, we have been simply coming in and virtually overriding. So there’s this collision now.” Although classically skilled and skilled in making life like work in oils, lately, Longobardi finds no motivation to work in that sort of artwork. “Proper now, I’m not excited about doing that; I don’t really feel like I’ve the time. I really feel like there’s an urgency to do this stuff,” she stated.
Although the small scale and cautious management evident in Longobardi’s foreign money items is in distinct distinction to the big, free, paper-based and copper items in INSTAR, they signify one other exploration of worth by way of artwork. She enjoys accumulating defunct foreign money from different international locations after which slicing it up and punctiliously layering it into miniature vistas. “I think about it like a discovered encyclopedia of worth,” she stated, noting that the imagery on cash from numerous international locations can point out the values of their origins. Some function nature, animals and landscapes, whereas others could have figures, buildings and different symbolism.
By slicing up the foreign money and assembling it into new compositions, Longobardi is taking part in with their worth — as soon as minimize, the cash can now not be used for its supposed function — however after being reconfigured as wonderful artwork, the works tackle an altogether new worth on the partitions of a gallery.
Finally, the works on show at INSTAR may be considered as a continuation of the concepts Longobardi has been exploring by way of different media, together with sculptural reclaimed plastic works included in final yr’s Atlanta Artwork Honest as a part of her Drifters Mission. It’s a dialog that isn’t completed but — and should by no means be — relating to humanity’s impression on the surroundings as seen by way of plastic innovation by way of industrial chemical reactions and the inevitable waste that comes together with these developments.
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Isadora Pennington is senior editor of artwork + design and dance. An skilled author and photographer with a deep love for the humanities, Isadora based the Sketchbook e-newsletter with Tough Draft Atlanta in 2022. She can be president of the Avondale Arts Alliance and director of the Avondale Arts Middle.