– Submitted by San Juan Islands Museum of Art

The community is invited to watch Dana Lynn Louis create her installation “As Above, So Below” in the glass Atrium Space of the San Juan Islands Museum of Art from Jan. 4 to Jan. 15.

SJIMA presents “As Above, So Below,” a site-specific installation by Portland-based artist Dana Lynn Louis, recipient of the 2016 Contemporary Northwest Art Award. This installation, like many of her previous works, references social and political concerns. For over a decade, Louis worked in West Africa helping to create the Ko-falen Cultural Center in Bamako, Mali.

That work had to end in 2012 due to the Mali Civil War. Since then, her work, including her upcoming installation, has been deeply informed by the loss of place. The site-specific response to the San Juan Islands re-places the self within this specific environment, an act in which she invites viewers to participate.

Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, Curator of Northwest Art at the Portland Art Museum states, “Creating spaces with intimate and large-scale drawings, light projections, and sculptural objects, [Louis] uses glass, light, and shadow to achieve a glitteringly magical environment.”

“As Above, So Below” includes four components: a floor-to-ceiling drawing on the glass of SJIMA’s Atrium Space; suspended glass and mixed-media sculptures; etched mirrors installed on the floor; and video projections. Experiential and multidisciplinary, the installation engages time and light, the changing shadows and reflections constructing a conversation with the materials of the Atrium Space and the environment of the region.

The show opens along with Ai Weiwei: Fault Line and Sleep of Reason: Selected Prints by Francisco Goya on January 23, 2016. For more information go to www.sjima.org