Alisa Looney
Best known for her award winning outdoor sculptures, Alisa Looney has exhibited in the U.S. and Canada. Her work is in a multitude of private and public collections, including Maryhill Museum of Art in Goldendale, WA, and several U.S. cities in the Northwestern states of Oregon, Idaho and Washington.
She expresses her ideas through sculpture, dance, painting and enameling in her Bend, OR, Studio. At the age of four, Alisa began drawing and building with clay and sand on the banks of the Spokane River, in Northern Idaho. The movement of the river is still present in her work today. She fell in love with metal arts as a silver smith in her early years, received her BFA in Design from Boise State University in 1983 and began welding in 1998.
Alisa returned to Idaho in 2010 to study with enamellist and BSU Professor Emeritus, John Killmaster, which has allowed her to merge sculpture design and narrative enamels into what she considers her most precious work to date. With John’s blessing, Alisa teaches these enameling techniques through workshops at her studio River Art Adventures in Bend, OR and is developing online classes for enamellists near and far.
More About Me
It is my goal to create sculpture and images that bring joy, connection and meaning to people who experience it. I shape and fabricate metal into open, energetic form, portraying movement and the expression of life. Each sculptural piece is plasma, laser and/or flame-cut from steel, bronze or stainless, then sanded, hammered and welded. For public works in human form, a colorful powder coated finish adds a bold statement and symbolic meaning. For other natural forms, I may choose to leave the metal in its natural color, add patina, paint, or finish the surface with colorful layers of glass enamel.
Fusing enamel to the surface of the work, adds depth and narrative in lustrous layers of glass. I am excited by the reflective qualities of this medium and the ability to illustrate a story in minute detail on sculpture, wall reliefs, panels and jewelry. Images are built up in several kiln-fired layers of liquid porcelain enamel, which are applied using variations of dipping, spraying, sgraffito and painting techniques.
My recent work explores our deep connection to nature and to each other. I am interested in how we as humans are coping with the environmental and cultural challenges we are facing. My desire is to explore the many ways we find meaningful moments amidst these challenges, even joy, reaching for a calm acceptance of what is, while also finding ways we can contribute to healing our planet. I am particularly interested in wild free-flowing rivers, the source of all life, and planting trees that provide clean air to breathe. I have committed to donating a portion of the proceeds from this body of work to non-profit organizations who work toward this common goal.