Understories

The Harrison Gallery is showing the work of Meg Lagodzki, whose oil paintings and acrylic-painted collages explore landscape and the relationship between humans and nature. 

Lagodzki has always been a hiker and has enjoyed spending time in the woods, which has prompted her to use landscape as a subject in her plein air paintings. However, her work has changed in the past few years as she has shifted to making painted collages that are intimately connected to her environment and the woods where she lives in Bloomington.

"Since moving out to the woods, I've become more aware of the small ways that the landscape is impacted by us permanently and in a moment," says Lagodzki. "It is hard for me to create art about nature without dwelling on the myriad ways that humans have altered it.” 

When Lagodzki is in the woods, her attention shifts between micro and macro observations, which she translates into her collages. She achieves this by carefully recording in her sketchbooks the habits of mushrooms, moss, and fossils, with these details layering in her work.

Storm Damage series

One series of work featured in Understories focuses on the aftermath of a storm near Lagodzki's home. This prompted her inquiry into a forest's ability to heal and renew itself. Lagodzki painted portraits of each of these damaged trees and framed them in the salvaged wood from those trees. 

Lagodzki's work is both inspiring in its beautiful expressions of nature and prompts viewers to consider the problems climate change poses to the forest's natural cycles, as well as the impact of human actions.