Lisa Osborn
Lisa Osborn has maintained a studio since 1994. Her practice is dedicated to the subject of the figure and the medium of clay. She completed a practice-based PhD at Transart Institute in 2018 entitled 'Encountering Statues: Object Oriented Ontology And The Figure In A Sculptural Practice'. Her research remains focused on what happens when we encounter statues and what is revealed about us when that encounter is considered.
She lives and works in southern Louisiana in the US.
Research Interests
Touching as a means to judge sculpture is misused as something literal. That touch is possible with sculpture is a feature of the real thing in the world, that when we touch the statue’s hand, we are not touching a real hand is a feature of statues. This is the important dichotomy always present in the encounter with statues.
Our encounters with statues perhaps point to a more intricate concession than merely attributing human motives and thoughts to an object shaped like a person. Philosopher and writer Alva Noë writes in his 2015 book Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, that we make the assumption ‘that the membrane dividing brain and environment is somehow the causally critical division between self and world’ (p.124). He continues by observing that art objects are ‘opportunities or affordances’ (p.124) for an encounter, rather than a didactic and specific prompt. There is more to touch than touching in the engagement or encounter with statues; we experience touch without having to specifically touch, in the moment, because we have touched metals, wood, rocks, other materials, and people before and bring this knowing with us to the encounter. We arrive at the statue already knowledgeable about what is unusual about this object from previous encounters with people and materials.