"Glitter Within Grit" Artist, Lorraine Richey Exhibits Her Quarantine Art at South Santiam Hall Art Gallery on LBCC Campus. Article by Leah Biesack, photos by Avery Leon-Castillo
Glitter Within Grit
Artist talk with Lorraine Richey covers her work, her process, and her ability to marry the difficult moments with the joyous ones.
Lorraine Richey is a Portland-based photographer and digital media artist who isn’t afraid to Zoom in on the hard truths, the grit sifted out of glitter, the imagery we need to face and may not always want to. Richey has a natural ability to capture the difficult realities and arrange them in an undoubtedly beautiful manner. LBCC Art Professor Anne Magrattan said,”…one of the things I really am struck by is the way that these images kind of fool me a little bit…they’re so beautiful and then I focus in more and more and I start to realize there’s a lot more emotional complexity than just something that is necessarily pretty, or I’ll notice that in something that is on the brink of being destroyed that it still has something in it that excites me about its life.”
Richey’s art lives in this grey space, where beauty bleeds into harrowing, where fire signifies tragedy and also rebirth, and where reality is often surreal.
Richey spoke about how she began her journey into photography (a $15 Kodak Instamatic camera kicked things off) and shed a little light on her process today. The current work hung in South Santiam Hall’s Gallery is all done with her iPhone and was made during the quarantine times of our still-present pandemic. You’ll see digital collage works involving imagery from the insatiable fires of last year, along with images inspired by and honoring the BLM movement.
Richey occasionally utilizes imagery of other artists within her own work, creating a smooth, worlds-colliding moment to witness.
Towards the end of the artist talk, which took place over zoom, a question was posed to Richey, asking what further advice she had for student artists. After a quick pause, she definitively said, “Persistence…don’t let it go. Keep loving it.”
Lorraine Richey’s work is on display through Nov. 5 in the South Santiam Hall Gallery, which is open between the hours of 8am-5pm. Make a point to stop through and take in the poignant work of an artist LBCC is so lucky to host.
Both its beauty and it's heartbreak will ignite you.
Photos by Avery Leon-Castillo:
