Lisa Blas is a visual artist born and educated in Los Angeles, currently based in Washington, DC. She has been a visiting artist at American University and Joppa Masonic Lodge in Washington. She is presently Senior Core faculty at the Corcoran College of Art & Design and Drawing and Painting faculty at George Washington University. She is a grant recipient from the Corcoran College of Art & Design and has participated in the Painting’s Edge residency in Idyllwild, California. Ms. Blas has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Washington, DC, Berlin, Germany, Mexico City, Los Angeles, California and Barcelona, Spain.

Since early 2003, I have been roaming the United States researching narratives of the American 19th Century. My travels have led me to the Northeast, South and mid-Atlantic region--where in the fall of that year, I made Washington, DC my home base.

Living in this part of the country has given me frequent access to museum archives and historical sites that are central to my practice. In the role of viewer/traveler/ researcher, one cycles through experiences such as anticipation, displacement, projection and memory recall. There is no particular sequence except a form of mental cataloguing/reconstruction regarding object, image, text and display. While navigating maps and battlefield parks, displacement becomes enveloped by a romantic notion, as one imagines herself/himself as an actor on a stage of the past. The result of this is a floating attachment to a distant, mediated and yet, palpable time.

Within these spaces, I examine historical representation and its relationship to contemporary experience. Visiting each site involves the collection of raw data, personal notes and observations. It is then assembled in a layered, bulletin board format on my studio wall. Entitled, Meet Me At The Mason Dixon, this piece functions as an ongoing palimpsest, with a scale of 8 x 5 feet, from 2003 to the present. Through this activity, I arrive at a new form of representation--both autobiographical and annotative. The resulting artworks are diverse in scope and move fluidly between photography, sculpture, painting, installation and digital media.

I see the American identity as a complex and permeable archive, shaped by fame, tragedy, revision and a deeply rooted optimism. The distance between everyday life and historical record is short. Icons such as the Yellow Ribbon possess a disputed origin, spanning three centuries and now firmly placed in popular culture. Whether the various political events, song versions, films, folklore and authorship surrounding it are true is of no consequence. Its sign has shape shifted into a form of national patriotism and personal wish fulfillment, as seen on cars, refrigerator magnets, and trees.