LORI K. GORDON

   Lori K. Gordon was born in the Northern Plains and made the Mississippi Gulf Coast her home in 1991. Largely self taught, Gordon works in many medias including graphite, fabric, acrylic, handmade paper and polymer clay.  She is especially fond of collage and assemblage work, and introduced her first mixed media series in 2000. Three years later, one of her pieces was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution for inclusion into their permanent collection.  “Labat: A Creole Legacy” is an eight by ten foot fabric collage which tells the story, in images and text, of the life of a Bay St. Louis Creole woman who died in 2002 at the age of 104.

   In 2003 Gordon began capturing the local landscapes of her beloved Mississippi Gulf Coast in acrylic, and continued that work until Hurricane Katrina upended her life on August 29, 2005.  With her home, studio and all of her supplies washed away by the 43 foot storm surge and 150 mile per hour winds which obliterated her community, Gordon returned to work using the only materials which were available to her.  Five weeks after the event, Gordon began collecting rubble and transforming it into works of art.  “The Katrina Collection” has been featured by MSNBC, CBS, National Public Radio, Christian Science Monitor, Associated Press, Art Gulf Coast,  South Mississippi Living, and in dozens of newspapers around the nation. The artist has been featured in several documentaries as well, including Art of the Storm, the award-winning Mississippi Son, and Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s Mississippi Roads and Southern Expressions. Collectors of her work include President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama, former President and First Lady Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, ESPN announcer Jon Miller, singer Faith Hill, Los Angeles producer Don Wilson, and Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts. In addition to the Smithsonian, public collections which have acquired her work include Mississippi Humanities Council, Katrina Research Center, University of Virginia, University of Southern Mississippi, William J Clinton Foundation and Thea Foundation’s Art Across Arkansas, Seattle’s Safeco Corporate Collection, University of Kentucky, Hancock Medical Center, Katrina Museum, and Alice Moseley Museum. Gordon has exhibited her work around the nation, and pieces of the series may be found in Europe and Asia as well as across the United States.

   Gordon is currently represented by Gallery 220 in Bay St Louis, MS; Sumner & Dene Gallery in Albuquerque, NM; Brown’s Fine Art in Jackson, MS and Atelier 24 Lexington in Asheville, NC. Her work may be seen on her website at www.lorikgordon.org, and a complete bio may be found online at Wikipedia. Tours of her studio may be arranged and the artist may be reached at lorikgordon@gmail.com. For her curriculum vitae, please scroll to the bottom of blog.