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| Sonja Thomsen "Oil Self Portrait" inkjet print © 2013 |
Milwaukee artist Sonja Thomsen visited Lawrence University Department of Art & Art History on April 9-10, 2013 to talk about her projects and critique student work in conjunction with her Nexus installation at the Wriston Art Center Galleries. Her last visit to LU was April 28, 2010, for a lecture on her water-related work and to meet with students. The Nexus series (an ongoing project since 2010) creates the "skin between memory, place and the present." Her Epson inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle paper are mounted and displayed on shelves hung at varying heights to "play with the perceptual shifting of scales" and are sometimes purposely disorienting to viewers. We first met Sonja in 2005 at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design just after she received her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. We were visiting artists brought in to critique senior work. She had just started teaching photography courses part-time and was critiquing with us. Since then, her work has evolved to include installation and sculpture. Her images have become more abstract while functioning as critical views of the important issues of our time, ranging from family life to big oil. These investigations exist in an intellectual space that combines philosophy, science, and aesthetics. Her work is in the permanent collections of Milwaukee Art Museum, Ljosmyndasafn Reykjavikur, and the Midwest Photographers Project at MoCP. She has won numerous prestigious grants and fellowships including the Greater Milwaukee Mary Nohl Fellowship for Established Artists
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| Sonja Thomsen critiques Digital Processes student Emma Moss's inkjet prints on April 10, 2013 in Steitz Hall |
