Tricia Lazuka’s beauty through conservation
Tricia Lazuka brings a lively interest in pattern, texture and line to her paintings and prints. Working in acrylics and encaustic (which incorporates beeswax and resin into the material), Lazuka plays with fields that can almost look like landscapes, while others look as if they’ve taken their inspiration from manmade objects.
Lazuka, who grew up in Northeast Ohio and lives in Kirtland, is one of 14 artists whose work is part of the PNC SmartHome exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Curated by RED DOT Project’s Christy Gray, the SmartHome collection features work by artists who celebrate sustainability through their selection of subject matter, materials, or by refining their processes to reduce environmental impact.
“My paintings in the SmartHome were made using cloth obtained through the ZeroLandfill, from the closing of the Carnegie Textile Mill in Cleveland,” Lazuka says.
Cleveland’s ZeroLandfill puts artists together with materials that would have otherwise been cast off by companies that manufacture all sorts of products.
Lazuka’s use of the fabric required a bit of problem-solving.
“I thought through how to use acrylic paint on cloth in a manner similar to dyeing fabric, while still remaining archival,” she says.
Interaction with materials are critical to Lazuka’s creative process.
“It is not that I set out to go in one direction,” she says. “The subject emerges through an interaction between myself and the medium. It is purely aesthetically driven, no philosophies involved.”
Conservation issues have been part of Lazuka’s DNA from the start.
“I have been creating art from found objects since childhood,” she says. “Found objects were the only art materials I could access. My parents lived through the Great Depression, and were subsistence farmers in Italy, before moving to the U.S. in the early 50s. They taught me the value of resourcefulness. They were environmentally conscious before it became a fashionable term. It was a matter of survival for them.”
Artwork shown: random thoughts 12, Tricia Lazuka
