“Sometimes I have trouble with this thought—how this surface of life that tosses and shatters is not the real surface. How we are dreams, blasts, shadows, insubstantial gusts of motion.”*
*Louise Erdrich
Four Souls, page 57-8

Invisible Lines, What We See When We See Through is an exhibition of works on paper created between 2020 and 2024 by New Mexico based artist Jane Lackey. Made during a time of deep focus perpetuated by the pandemic, as the world began to open back up to change and transition, the works in the exhibition map the spatial and emotive interplay of movement and stillness during this period. Using a meticulous process, Lackey creates large-scale, cut paintings on paper that embed the matrix of woven grid into a network of fluid forces. Hung away from the wall, the unframed, slightly sculptural paper surfaces cast delicate shadows and appear to float. They contain both fragility and strength that is expressed in the crossing lines and shadows. 

The artist’s drawing process is one of constant repetition and the movement of her hands, focusing awareness on sensations of breath, vibration and touch that align with our emotional and physical selves. The multipart series presented at SPEEDWELL uses different sizes, proportions and colors to invite close observation, and to indicate that what we sense is often hidden, invisible, or altered by its context. In Lackey’s work, close observation argues for a greater openness to the depth of complexity. Nothing is black and white, we can always stretch our capacity to understand the complex world around us with greater awareness and multiplicity.

Jane Lackey is a multi-disciplinary visual artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her minimal paintings on paper and large-scale installations focus on materials, objects and mark-making systems that summon invisible aspects of common identity and connection to others. Solo and group exhibition venues include the Wellcome Trust, London; I Space, Chicago; Exit Art, NYC; New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs; Gallery of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs; Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe and the Art Gym, Portland, Oregon. Her artwork has been supported by grants from Artist Trust in Seattle, National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, Grand Arts, Kansas City and Tamarind Institute. Artist residencies include Camargo Foundation, France; NEA/La Napoule Foundation, France; Grand Arts, Kansas City and the 2011 JUSFC/NEA Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship, Japan. Her work is in the collections of the Detroit Institute of the Arts, Cranbrook Art Museum, Tamarind Institute, Museum of Arts and Design and James A. Michener Collection at Kent State School of Art among others. During her tenure as Professor/Chair of Fiber at Kansas City Art Institute and as Artist-in-Residence at Cranbrook Academy of Art, she engaged her role as artist/educator to amplify the conceptual and theoretical unfolding of textile-based traditions and to push boundaries that often divide craft and fine arts.