LAUREL SPARKS
Settler Séance 2022-2023
mixed media installation
Settler Seance was an environment of geometric patterns and objects based on genealogical research into Sparks’ working class Bozeman history.
Sparks is the great-great granddaughter of Julius Lehrkind, who stowed away on a ship from Germany to escape war with Denmark and eventually settled in Bozeman to start a brewery. The project was site-specific, as Tinworks Art is located in the heart of the historic brewery district developed by Lehrkind in 1895. Settler Seance acknowledged and paid tribute to four generations of the Lehrkind family who lived and/or frequented family gatherings at the historic Lehrkind Mansion.
Sparks’ installation included a 15-foot geometric wall painting that diagramed her maternal bloodline. The painted wall and existing black and white checkered floor were overlaid with paintings and wooden sculptures created as ceremonial objects for each family member. Using Hermetic Magic correspondence systems, Sparks translated the letters of 24 names into colorful patterns to unlock their hidden resonances. In tandem with paintings and objects, a video screening synthesized oral histories, field recordings, and text with corresponding musical chords and color sequences composed by Shawn E Hansen.
An edition of zines, including Sparks’ 2022 northside walking tour script, archival photos, and drawings provided context for Lehrkind history as well as the artist’s esoteric ideation process. While embedded with specific identities and histories, the abstract nature of Settler Seance reflected ways that time, demographic, and cultural changes absorb into and transform the region. As Bozeman’s working class rapidly disappears, Settler Seance offered an opportunity to conjure local history through interpersonal stories and memories. The work offered a multisensory experience shaped by an invisible past.
ABOUT LAUREL SPARKS
Laurel Sparks is a Brooklyn-based painter whose work applies esoteric correspondence systems to materialize structures outside of perceptible reality. Woven, stained, and adorned surfaces offer idiosyncratic expressions of profound chromatic, mathematical, and geometric formulas. Sparks’ exhibitions include solo shows at Kate Werble gallery, NYC; Knockdown Center, Brooklyn and group shows at Cheim and Read gallery, NYC; EFA Project Space, NYC; Franklin Street Works, Stamford, CT; Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, NYC; Barbara Walters Gallery at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY; Berman Museum at Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA; and Art In General, NYC.
Sparks’ work has been mentioned in publications such as the New Yorker, New York Times, New York Magazine, The Paris Review, Blouin Artinfo, The Brooklyn Rail, Two Coats of Paint, Modern Painters, New American Paintings, the Drawing Center’s the Bottom Line, Art21 Magazine, Vogue Mexico, Boston Globe, Art in America, Bloomberg, Timeout New York, Huffington Post, and Art and Auction. Sparks received numerous grants and fellowships including a MacDowell Fellowship, Elizabeth Foundation Studio Intensive Program at Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, NY, Fire Island Artist Residency, NY, Residenza del Palmerino, Associazione Culturale Il Palmerino, IT, Berkshire Taconic Fellowship, SMFA Alumni Traveling Fellowship and an Elaine DeKooning Fellowship. Sparks holds an MFA from Bard College and a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University in Boston, MA.
In 2022, Sparks completed an immersive installation and six performances in collaboration with sound/video artist Shawn Hansen at Soloway Gallery, Brooklyn NY.
2022-2023 Tinworks Artist Laurel Sparks