09 Jul Kella creates artwork for our 2020-21 Season
For Les Délices’ 2020-21 Season, entitled Embracing Change, we have partnered with Cleveland-based artist Lori Kella to create a bespoke suite of images to accompany the programs. At once dramatic and serene, hopeful and uncanny, Kella’s work evokes the complex emotions of the pandemic era, and represents, for us, an emergence from a period of mourning into the glow of a new beginning.
Kella created and photographed this scene for our October program, Bewitched, where the hawk is a symbol of the witch Circe.
Kella explains her process as an exploration of “…historical, environmental, and personal connections to the land. Typically, I build tabletop dioramas out of everyday materials such as paper, soap, and wool, crafting these fabrications as an elaborate still life meant only for the camera’s lens. Once constructed, I use lighting to dramatically transform these tableaus, bringing to the surface hidden truths that belie our understanding of the natural world; for the images unfolding in front of the camera are an amalgamation of familiar places, unexplored wilderness, and pure fiction.”
In Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain, haunting melodies get refracted into three voice canons. Kella creates an air of mystery and invites us to admire our own reflection in this fountain image for our April 2021 program.
Kella’s attention to detail and sensitivity to mood immediately drew us into her work. And just as Les Délices’ artistic director Debra Nagy’s craft requires a depth of knowledge and creativity to fill in gaps where musical details have been lost to time, Kella’s work “ponders both absence and rediscovery” in its creation and preservation of landscapes.
Made aware of the opportunity by mutual friend and supporter, Bill Busta, whose former gallery was a venue for both Kella’s exhibitions and our early concerts, Kella said,“I was excited by the idea of creating a visual narrative that connected to the music of Les Délices. I have attended several concerts over the years and thoroughly enjoyed the experience so I thought this might be a fun but challenging project to tackle.”
Winter cardinals bring a different view to holiday imagery for December’s Noel, Noel.
About Lori Kella
Lori Kella was born in St. Joseph, Michigan. She received a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art, and her MFA from Cornell University in 2001. Kella’s photography explores the complexity of the 21st century landscape by crafting elaborate fictions meant only for the camera’s lens. These images bring to the surface hidden truths that belie our understanding of the natural world and call into question the permanence of our surroundings. Kella has exhibited in prestigious venues such as The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Akron Art Museum, Galerie Drei and the Rathuas in Dresden Germany, The Print Center in Philadelphia, Site: Brooklyn in NY, MOCA Cleveland, Artspace in Raleigh, NC, Filter Photo in Chicago, IL, and William Busta Gallery in Cleveland, OH. Her newest series titled Erie: Lost and Found; Vanishing Shoreline examines climate change along the Great Lakes. Solo exhibitions of this artwork are scheduled at PhotoCentric in Cleveland, and at the Rosewood Art Center in Kettering, OH. Photographs from this series are also featured in State of the Art 2020 at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Kella has received four OAC Individual Fellowships Awards, a full fellowship to attend Vermont Studio Center, a Creative Workforce Fellowship, and funding from Art
Pops of green, bright white, and interacting goldfinches project a sense of play for February’s Games & Grounds.
Place America and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Lori Kella lives on the shore of Lake Erie in Cleveland, OH and is a faculty member at Laurel School in Shaker Heights, OH. Visit her website at http://www.lorikella.com