“I am thrilled to exhibit this body of work by my mother, Joan Lyons. She was, after all, my very first teacher and her influence on my work as an artist has been significant” —Elizabeth Lyons
"The Symmetrical Drawings began with a fascination with historical decorative arts— traditional book borders, fabric and wallpaper design. In the 1970s, when this work was made, those practices were widely referred to as the minor arts, prized for utility rather than aesthetic qualities. As I began the work, I soon realized that much of what I had regarded as abstract fantastical patterning revealed itself to be mimetic— a direct representations of plant forms or geometric figures, flipped and flopped a bit." —Joan Lyons
Although these images look more like drawings, they are direct electrostatic photographs of plant materials The process used was Haloid-Xerox, an early copier prototype which paired a flatbed view-camera in which a plate was exposed with a separate toner unit that developed the image. The unfixed toner image could be transferred, flipped, and otherwise manipulated.
Since the start of her career, Joan Lyons (b. 1937) has exhibited her art in galleries and museums around the world. It is also in the permanent collections of, for example, the DeCordova Museum; J. Paul Getty Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art; National Gallery of Canada; Norton-Simon Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery. In 2007, Lyons had a retrospective exhibition at Rochester Contemporary Art Center, and in 2018, Lyons’ career was featured in a major exhibition at Steven Kasher Gallery in New York and Paris.
In addition to her work in photography, Lyons was Founding Director of Rochester’s Visual Studies Workshop Press, which she led from 1972–2004. She was responsible for the production and publication of 450 titles, as well as over 30 editions of her own artist books. She is the editor of the influential Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook (1986, 1988, 1991, 1993), and Artists’ Books: Visual Studies Workshop Press 1972–2008(2009).
