Art Review by JJ Levine

WiThin Places
JJ Levine

Sitting unassumingly at a crossroads like a seeker awaiting their next life path, the
artist watches the art exhibit unfold. Patrons arrive, some familiar with the territory being
presented, some just to immerse themselves in the creative atmosphere they love so

much. The space held together by the works of MFA graduate student, Lisa Rasmussen.
Her paintings, photographs and installations on display this evening straddle the realms
of inspiration, inner sight, and cross cultural phenomenon.

With healing light as the chosen medium, the artist openly invites anyone brave or
willing enough to trek mountain ranges of the psyche, whether that is perceived as
personal or collective. Voyagers around the room are spotted preparing to depart on
guided expeditions with individually assigned sherpas of the light, inter-dimensional,
spirit guides, wielding paint while walking between the worlds. Operating in the neo-
shamanistic world of creativity as ritual, Ms Rasmussen assigns art materials to their
appropriate posts. Lines, stains and fields come alive with pigmented intention, making

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the p~rceiver's reality feel like the rug just got pulled out from underneath them.

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Lisa's ~acred intentions are painted multi-dimensionally, making marks on canvases with
ancient symbols, and then layering over with an image that the viewer finally sees. The
'presence of the Earth Mother herself is felt sweeping to and fro on a ground of pre-
meditated archaic ecstasy'; an intersection between Spirituality, Divinity and the space-
time continuum. Her artworks, whenfeeling into them like portals, open up like
windows into alternate possibilities. While standing in front of one of Lisa's paintings, I
fell into it, falling into a wormhole showing another time and space. I saw a tunnel with a
bear's sleeping space similar to one I had seen while recently visiting Aillwee Cave in
Ireland. Upon returning to present reality, I could feel that my vision and the painting
were connected somehow, through the energetics of place and time. Some would say that
that space holds a frequency that is both emotionally and spiritually familiar.

However, be weary, young travelers, for there is a dark side to the Thin Places that we' are
shown, that may not be otherwise realized. Another side privy to the naive, the
courageous, the initiated, or even the uninitiated is that of the darkness of man's ascent
away from nature. Viewers intending to spend "Sunday afternoon in the park'", are
instead confronted with reflections of the black waters of their earthly existence..

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Lisa Rasmussen has that angle covered as well; with artist's integrity, and angel's
guidance, she skillfully breathes life into the void. Taking the mirrors handed to
unsuspecting purveyors, the artist smashes them with subconscious, yet idyllic, imagery.
The artist personally guides the viewer into her private life of meditative memories,
artistic discipline and spiritual discovery.

1 Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. 1964; reprint, Princeton,
N1:Princeton University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-691-1.1942-2

2 http://en.wikipedia.orglwiki/Sunday_in_the_Park _with_George