Curiosity and clarity: one guides my search for the other, and there's no letting up in sight.

Lori Claerhout, Maker

I create linocut prints and make three dimensional pieces from found objects; both in response to our natural and social surroundings and how hope and despair show through them. 

A three dimensional piece might contain bird-of-prey feathers collected on nature walks, birch bark harvested from wood that we burn in the stove that heats our house, or errant screws and twine that magically show up. I’m curious about how collections of found objects can start to create meaning when appearing in repetition. I’m curious about consciously re-using what might otherwise been seen as garbagelike materials and considering their place in art.

I’m inspired to create by social and environmental issues. For example, a piece including broken feathers and a sea of bolts and upturned sharp screws comes from contemplating the massive tar sands tailings ponds a few hundred kilometres from where I live in forested northern Alberta. A cheerful and textured linocut print depicting a gathering of trees is named “Collective” on considering how trees and humans both need each other to survive. Visually, I hope to convey a gentle yet pointed criticism of issues that are more often overlooked and might also contain significance to our very existence. Through using found objects, I invite the viewer to see what’s familiar in new ways, or to take in a tableau including familiar objects that might not be immediately discernible.

In my linocut prints, I came upon the process of degradé colouring early on. It isn’t easily replicable, involving colour mixing on the rollout and with print runs limited by the amount of ink that can be picked up and mixed in any one session. Further, I’ve experimented with monotype prints using layered reflections of found objects. 

I very much consider myself to be among the early novices in my art making practice. I still have plenty of questions around how to make what I’m imagining in my mind and continue to seek out very technical, practical skills, like how best to sharpen my carving tools in linocut and which lino surfaces might be best for what I’d like to make. The two practices of printmaking and assembling sculptural found object pieces both wander through my creative practice. Moving forward, I plan to make larger pieces that one might navigate around or through as they experience them.

Writer

I've been writing and editing for hire since 1998. In the beginning, it was editing gas company publications and researching a book on student loans in Canada. I wanted answers! I learned that "mercaptan" is the substance added to natural gas to make it smell, and that there are many ways to fund your time with a Canadian post-secondary institution.

And then I started working for one.

Editing distance undergraduate materials honed my skills at following style guides, targeting an audience with instruction, writing compassionate author letters, and negotiating copyright. My days of editing academic papers and writing and editing online content for businesses and other nonfiction are mostly behind me, but if I stumbled upon an adventurous multimedia project including writing, I might consider jumping back in. 

I went through a phase of deep curiosity about whims, and it lingers.

What are they? How do they work? And what do they mean to our creative tugs and joy in life? 

Whims. Maybe they allow us to stretch. Maybe they inform creative processes. And, maybe, they allow us freedom: to try, to fail, to review, to hone, and to create elegant beauties in the world. That’s where I’m at with print- and other art-making. I follow whims, learn skills, and try to put things together in ways that might encourage curiosity.

When I'm not making things, writing, or asking questions, you can find me on the trails or in the pool. I post every now and then on Instagram as loriclaerhout.