2007 – “Emerging Grounds”. EJ Lightman & Anne O’Callaghan, Visual Arts Centre of Clarington.
“…Lightman’s votive-like forms combine fragments of man made materials such as barbed wire, glass, a saw, and roots with coral, shells, teeth and bone. They gather meaning as auras of intention, longing to remember; to hold onto what could so easily slip from us. Gold covered roots once pot bound are freed to delineate the air that surrounds them reminding us of the power of growing things. Wax and bronze casts reprint a living morphology with the spell of Mnemosyne. Images of a cascading waterfall are caught within a rectangular piece of floor. Water spins toward taps as a never ending cycle of use, forgets the freedom of natural elements. Illumination is an underlying metaphor that touches each of Lightman’s constructions. Even her menacing pieces, Handsaw and Wound shed light on a psychic condition. These concise poetic forms have a relationship to early pictographic language constructs as each carefully chosen object is modified by its’ collective form. There is the internal presence of a story unfolding as the meeting of gathered detritus emerges into a different form of speaking. …””
excerpt from essay “emerging grounds” by Maralynn Cherry
Exhibition catalog “Emerging Grounds” PDF