P R E S S  A D V I S O R Y

May 27th, 2023

Jeffrey Moose Gallery is proud to announce an exhibition of work by printmaker, papermaker and painter Lea Basile-Lazarus for the months of June and July. The exhibition will run from Friday, June 2nd through Tuesday, August 1st. A reception will be held on First Friday, June 2nd from 6 to 8 PM. A FaceBook walk through with the artist will run from roughly 5:20-5:40. On First Friday, July 7th, Ms. Basile-Lazarus  will conduct a paper making demo from 6-8 PM.

Ms. Basile-Lazarus, originally from New Jersey, moved to Chicago where she received an MFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 1979, with a concentration in printmaking. She has also studied at the prestigious Oxbow School of Art in Michigan, studying mono printing, silkscreen and paper making. For several years she has traveled to the renowned Hook Pottery Paper in La Porte, Indiana to make paper and her extraordinary paper pulp paintings in a unique studio/homestead/farm environment. The paintings are made with pure paper pulp and pigments. She taught art in public and private schools for 28 years, received a teacher’s Fullbright grant to learn about Japan’s art, culture and educational system and received a grant to visit schools and villages in Ghana, West Africa.

She has been making prints for over 40 years but also makes paper, which is the root of much of her current work. Paper pulp paintings and monoprints with added media form the bulk of the exhibit. She is a classic American abstractionist, though tiny houses and tree trunks appear ocassionally. Her art relates to colorfield painters and abstract expressionists, with color, texture and grids used as primary subjects. After moving to Gig Harbor in 2020, she began to focus on the trees and several works in the show are composed around tall vanishing trunk forms reaching to the sky. Many of the new works are resplendent with bright, jewel-like colors, just in time for our gorgeous Northwest Summer.