With each person that engages with her work, local artist Andi Lynn Arnold hopes she’s planting a seed.
Her new installation at the Owatonna Arts Center, “In the Garden of Life, Light and Growth,” explores the parallels between life and the ever-changing cycles of nature. Inspired by Arnold’s passion for gardening, it tells a story of grief, hope and change through a series of prints. The show was supported by an individual artist grant from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council.
Around her prints, she’s assembled flowers, strings of lights and even table settings — creating a space that feels less than an art gallery, and more like an inviting garden party. In that space, she hopes people can experience the sense of healing and renewal she finds in her garden.
For Arnold, art isn’t about the physical object, whether it be a painting or a print. The piece is just a means to an end.
“My biggest goal as an artist is to make people think and reflect, and what they take away from it is their own personal experience. It’s just that I want them to feel something,” she said. “The experience itself has always been more important to me than the artwork itself. I’ve never viewed my own art as precious. It’s like, ‘OK, that served its purpose,’ and I repaint over something or use it in something else.”
Just like a real garden, the installation is designed to grow and change. Arnold welcomes visitors to write their thoughts on sheets of paper, sharing their own experiences or the connections they feel to the show. She’ll be visiting the Arts Center periodically over the show’s run to pin these reflections up and water the plants.
Arnold traces the show’s genesis back to a time of grief and transition in her life several years ago. She emerged from that time with a newfound appreciation for the ever-changing nature of life, thanks in part to the creative outlets she’s found in art and gardening. Arnold hopes people visiting the show will find things that resonate with their own experiences. She acknowledges that exploring these emotions in such a public way puts her in a vulnerable position, but said vulnerability is a part of fostering connections.
Arnold has fond memories of picking strawberries with her grandmother, and riding along with her grandfather on his lawn mower. From an early age, she’s associated the smells and sensations of gardens with love and warmth. Likewise, art has been a lifelong pursuit for her.
OAC Artistic Director Silvan Durben loved the idea of using gardening as a lens to explore human experiences
“Andi is very creative about using printmaking to tell her story. She’s using a lot of different techniques in the printing process. The beauty of having a printed process is she’s able to make multiples of them and still they’re original because they’re distinctly unreproducible,” he said.
Arnold sees a profound connection between the experiences of printmaking and gardening. While attending art school, she felt she didn’t quite fit in with other artists like painters and potters. In printmakers, however, she found her people.
Like gardeners, printmakers have only so much control over the end result. Regardless of their skill, precision and knowledge, there’s always opportunities for errors and “happy surprises” to creep in. Often, prints don’t come off the press looking just as the printmaker envisioned them. That element of chaos may be frustrating for some, but Arnold has learned to embrace it.
“Even mistakes are opportunities for growth and to learn, and if you view it that way you can go through life and it just makes life easier,” she said.
Editions of the prints from the show are on sale at Central Park Framing and Finds. Arnold said she hopes to take her art career to the next level, starting locally but gradually making her prints available to a wider audience.
“In the Garden of Life, Light and Growth” will be on view at the Arts Center until July 28.
Most Popular
Comments / 0