Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Nigro.
Hi Lisa, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today
How I got here… That’s a lot of question and a whole lot of years of storytelling to get you there. Don’t get me wrong, I love storytelling, but for now, I’ll tell you my first story- I DID NOT WANT TO BE AN ARTIST! Although my natural talents for drawing and painting were apparent by the age of seven, I dreamed of becoming so many other things. Like a veterinarian. Why not? I loved animals. But when I realized I might have to slice and dice open those cute and fuzzy little critters, I lost interest- quick. Then I thought I wanted to be a jockey, I was short enough and damn I really wanted my own horse so badly then. I wished I could join 4H just to have the opportunity to ride and learn how to take care of them. Instead, I drew them in school, exact-like, in markers, and my parents bought me paint by number kits! Remember those?! I also loved being in the woods and building forts and telling the neighborhood kids what activity they would be helping me with next. Like, let’s make a couch out of all these branches laying around here. Or let’s pretend I’m the wicked witch and this stone wall is my cave – and then I’d run around trying to capture all my little friends. Apparently, this sort of directing of others is still an integral part of the person I am today. I see this in my work with large-scale outdoor art installations, especially the witchy making magic part!
Throughout most of my life I took art classes, yet I literally stumbled into the undergraduate art program at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. I didn’t know what I wanted to major in, but I did have an art portfolio. I met with one of the art department heads, and then and there, I was accepted. Something like that happening today would be unheard of! They called UMass ZooMass then, you can probably imagine why. I had transferred in from Cape Cod Community College, and painting it was- My first major… Until I was introduced to bronze casting. There was just something about all that fire in the crucible, and my new sculptor boyfriend, and carving wax to make a figure in bronze. It felt natural, and – I was in love. Molten metal and the cutting of metal, the smell of it- to this day, I know other metal heads out there know what I’m talking about. I had lost interest in painting, but I had my thesis to complete. At that time, I was inspired by the German Expressionists. My color pallet was bold like theirs and my work focused on the figure in natural settings.
In the early 90s I had been living in Boston working as a graphic designer by day, and by night and on weekends I was painting in the basement of our three-story apartment house in an Italian neighborhood in Somerville, not far from Tufts University. I was more than happy to leave that cold, dank, and unfriendly city when I was accepted into the graduate Painting program at the University of Texas in Austin… Although, it wasn’t long before I found myself working in the sculpture department as a teaching assistant and creating bronze sculpture in their foundry. The fire and the metal had enticed me once again, as had the processes of mold making and body casting. My entire thesis project revolved around casting women’s body parts. My own parts mostly, but also other women’s breasts. I turned some of those breast castings into rubber stalactites and stalagmites. Another casting became what looked like a skin grafted breast made of rubber. I had them floating in a circular ten by two-foot steel trough filled with water that was the color of black ink. That piece was about my Aunt Viv who had just had a mastectomy. I found I was creating installations and walk-through environments that questioned and twisted the male gaze, and suddenly I noticed I had become a Feminist. Thankfully, I had the backing of some of the women professors in the department because my work made those Texas boys feel uneasy.
After graduate school, the fire bit me again with my first experience at a festival in the desert I had heard so much about… this Burning Man. I heard they had a drive by shooting range. I was like WOW. I’ve got to check this out! Once I went, everything became bigger and better in so many ways, unbelievably crazy out there. It’s really beyond my capabilities to explain in words here and now. Hopefully all that will be in a book someday. Apparently, my feminist heart still pumped and it had much more to say, for in 1999 I invented a Burning Woman for that Burning Man. Her name was Diana. She was my first large-scale art installation at Burning Man. She wasn’t just any Diana, she was Diana of Ephesus the multi-breasted fertility goddess of the Romans, Artemis the huntress to the Greeks. She was twelve feet tall and an actual working sundial. The crown on her head cast its shadow indicating the time of day upon timelines of colored gravel I had spread out on the playa floor.
To create this goddess, I tied long steel rods into place with baling wire. I didn’t know how to weld then I had to wait for my friend Jetfuel to stop by the shop on the playa to weld everything into place for me. I tried to learn stick welding that summer without much luck, the stick kept sticking and I was running out of time. Ironically the theme of the festival that year was the Wheel of Time. I worked on completing her with several women I had met at Burning Man the year prior. We dragged clay out of a nearby hot pool to mud the exterior of Diana, a technique I had learned from observing the work of Pepe Ozan. An amazing man who had created and produced incredible sculpture sets with accompanying theatrical pieces for Burning Man. He was a huge inspiration to me.
I worked with a couple of women on choreographing an all-female performance for Diana which took place the final night of the event, just after the Man burned. Thirteen women reenacted their version of the four elements and were birthed from beneath Diana’s legs. The spectacle climaxed with Seraphina on stilts igniting the sculpture by forcing a long hot poker into the sculpture’s yoni, which my friend Danny Umstead had stuffed with pyrotechnics- meaning she was full of fireworks, wood, diesel and gasoline. It was a beautiful burn.
The fertility goddess performance – ritual – or whatever you want to call it, had for sure done its work. One of the performers became pregnant immediately afterwards, and I gave birth to an interesting creature of my own the following year after reading the book “Wicked” by Gregory Maguire which later became the Broadway hit. In the first few pages he describes an extraordinary copper-clad dragon clocktower that roams from village to village displaying twisted puppet theatre. The image of this in my mind became my inspiration for creating that rolling and fire-breathing dragon beast named Draka, as in Draco the Constellation. It was the summer of 2000, in the Chinese year of the Metal Dragon. In 2012 we reconstructed Draka again for the Art Car Parade in Houston, that was the year of the Water Dragon- I find that quite interesting, and not coincidental.
Draka was an incredible hit at the festival the first year at Burning Man. It was the largest sculpture on wheels anyone had ever seen. Built on a truck pulling three trailers, which was Flynn Mauthe’s idea. He said, “You know, like a Louisiana Hayride.” Being from the north, I did not know what he meant at all. But Larry Harvey, the instigator of Burning Man, loved the idea and I received a grant from Burning Man to create the dragon. I could write an entire novel about how that build went. There was certainly a ton of Drama around Draka… And then, the next thing I know, I’m pregnant! I took a little time off from Burning Man and started my own little festival, the Burnin’Bush. It was a Fire & Metal Arts Festival, and my joke to the world. George Bush was president, and I loved the double entendre of the name, you know the actual biblical burning bush, but also in honor of those redheads with their fire in the crotch. My twisted sense of humor. Flynn and I hosted the event 4th of July weekend on public land for public use run by Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Blue Wing Playa just east and over Limbo Mountain, not far from the Black Rock Desert. After two years of hosting Burnin’Bush, the BLM wanted us to start charging people to attend. We didn’t like that idea very much, then suddenly, life after Burnin’Bush and Burning Man took a turn to Texas with my dragon in tow on two semi-trucks.
Fast forward to present day, I received devastating news about my dragon art car Draka. The new director of the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art allegedly thought it was okay to remove Draka from their property without a phone call or email to notify me that they wanted her removed. I’ve repeatedly inquired into the facts as to how exactly she was removed and where she was taken. One employee said he had seen tow trucks. Mr. Pace denies there were tow trucks and says Draka was taken out in pieces. This is a 100-foot dragon that was built on a large truck, the chassis of an RV and two trailers. If she was taken away in pieces, it would have been at least a day of work with a good size crew to cut her up and haul it all away. I told him this was disrespectful to me as the artist who created and owned her. I still don’t know the details. Fans and lovers of Draka are outraged. This was a legendary piece of art at both Burning Man and Houston Art Car Parade. I am appalled at the behavior, rudeness, and audacity of this new director. There are parts of Draka that I would have liked to have salvaged, like the irreplaceable hand forged pieces on her back doors, cut-out steel sheets in her interior, and her head- I would have kept her head!
I should have been given the opportunity to remove Draka myself. A former professor of mine at UT Austin said this would never have happened to a male artist’s work. I had entrusted this piece of art to the Orange Show. They paid to transport Draka from the Nevada desert to Houston in 2004, and again in February 2016 from Austin Film Society property to their Center for Visionary Art. During that last move it was my understanding that they would assist with her maintenance and restoration as they had done annually years prior, in 2004 to 2007, and in 2012 for their 25th Anniversary of Art Car Parade. I waited for the previous director to initiate restoration plans, but that never happened. The organization threatened me instead by demanding I complete the massive dragon mosaic swing set I designed for them in Smither Park in less than six months! Well, you know, it took longer than six months. But that’s no excuse, we should expect more from an organization that claims to be conservators of visionary art. I have the right to know what happened and why I hadn’t been notified before they implemented their plans to “dispose” of Draka.
On a more positive note, I am currently working on two private commissions. A steel sculpture of Don Quixote and a twelve by eight-foot mural painting of St. George Slaying the Dragon. I am also excited to embark on my next adventure of building Angler Maiden with the art community of ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands this summer. Postponed last year due to the pandemic, working with Bosch Parade has been a dream of mine since 2016 and I’m overjoyed to be invited to participate.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
A smooth road? As you can see, my life as an artist has not been easy. Troubles and struggles have followed, haunted, and taunted me. Besides the recent disappointment with the Orange Show, Phoenix Rising was an incredibly challenging project. I found myself face to face with a lot of re-learning on the Phoenix, mainly due to being away from the Burning Man event for so long and forgetting what it was like working with volunteers and coping with that harsh desert environment. With the assistance of multiple friends and a dedicated crew the Phoenix was built. From the Rust to Dust is what we called our venture from San Antonio to Nevada. The sculpture included an interactive component where a sensor attaches to a participant’s finger and causes the flames to pulse to the heartbeat of the wearer. It was amazing! Thanks to my pyrotechnic partner Scott Gasparian, aka Gaspo, and his mastermind idea. It was like bringing back the fascinating fire of Draka to Burning Man again.
Then there was a series of unfortunate events which occurred after Burning Man- my lovely Phoenix was absconded by a truck driver and his wife to never be seen again! It was extremely disappointing to miss so many exhibition opportunities with Phoenix Rising in and outside of Texas. We were scheduled to appear at Love Burn in Miami, Telluride Fire Festival in Colorado, and at a smaller art event in Houston. We could have set it up in front of the warehouse compound where we built the Phoenix, and it would have blown away Southtown San Antonio. The Latino community in San Antone love their fireworks. They would have loved the flame effects and interactivity of the Phoenix equally, I’m certain of it. And now I am even more saddened by the fact that Draka is gone too, but I will not give up on pursuing my next creation.
The initial building of Draka that first year on Joan Grant’s ranch in the Nevada desert was no picnic either. There was drama, as I mentioned earlier, but there was love, a lot of love… Dragon myths and dragon energies tend to stir up a lot in us humans. That dragon was made with I don’t know how many different colored recycled 55-gallon steel drums. In dragon speak, each color represents a different kind of energy. Draka brimmed with unusual energy, so much so people would tell me they could SEE that she was ALIVE. There were also a lot of people getting bit by her- seriously! To those who were literally bit, like a little scratch from a scale of Draka, I would say they got off easy. It was the psychological biting which isn’t seen that I had to endure. Taming that dragon, my dragon, forced me to realize that I needed to learn to be less trusting of people. That lesson really stands out when I think back to the happenings that occurred then and also now.
One of the other biggest events of my life was becoming a mother. That presented a whole new set of struggles to overcome. For one, I had to push the pause button on my art career for ten years. I focused on raising my daughter who is now twenty. I am continually working on landing my next teaching gig and currently the gig is ceramics. I am loving it as I attempt to live a more balanced life between art career, family and friends.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My work as an artist doesn’t merely encompass time in the shop or studio creating art. It involves a great deal of research on grant and residency opportunities. I spend an exorbitant amount of time filling out applications, writing proposals and being precise in my answering in order to fund my artistic visions. Though my work has brought great joy to a large audience of people, an artist must be prepared for the disappointments and the rejection letters, because they will come. My advice to other women artists is keep a good attorney in your left pocket and keep an eye on your contracts. Having a backup plan to the backup plan on projects is paramount. Being in contact with your fellow artists and meeting people is also critical. When the rewards do arrive, I am appreciative as I am now a recent recipient of grants from Bosch Parade https://boschparade.nl/en/ and the City of San Antonio to create my newest floating sculpture design Angler Maiden.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
My success as an artist is fully based on my determination and perseverance. My drive to create comes naturally to me. I am competitive as well, though I don’t usually admit or talk much about it. When most others would have given up on making their art, I keep on, no matter the lack of income or overcoming of obstacles. I’ve predominantly created art for my own satisfaction. I was never interested in becoming one of those cookie-cutter artists who makes the same series of whatever it is over-and-over again to appease the galleries and become their tool for generating money. I can’t be a machine like that for anyone, and I don’t kiss ass. That fact sets me apart from what is expected of most artists in the art world in America.
Success has many disguises- it reinvents itself, disappears and at times comes back. It’s not static. The level of success I’ve achieved in this life is not exactly the kind of success that is accounted for by our society. I’ve never really been interested in becoming rich. I’ve mostly aspired to continue to create what I want with the full amount of funding, resources, and the man and woman power I need to bring all my crazy dreams and visions to fruition- with zero compromises on the vision. Like Damien Hirst or Kiki Smith, I wish I could have the opportunities they’re afforded. I don’t aspire to be a gazillionaire like Damien, but I’d really enjoy meeting him one day and it would be grand if we could create some art together.
Now that I am a more experienced artist, I enjoy supporting and nurturing younger artists through teaching. Teaching is one of the best ways I’ve been able to give back to the world. If success can be measured by how often a person inspires others, I’ve inspired a whole lot of people out there, and that’s where I feel most successful and satisfied with the work I’ve done so far. There is so much more inside this head of mine which still needs to be freed and expressed in this 3-D world. I can see myself squeezing at least another twenty years of creating and giving before I cross to the other side.
Pricing:
- St. George Slaying the Dragon (study for mural painting) $250
- Angler Maiden (sketch for floating sculpture Bosch Parade) $150
- My Heart Belongs to San Francisco $250
- Home Is Where the Heart Is (assemblage) $950
Contact Info:
- Email: drakamistress@gmail.com
- Website: www.flyingphoenix.biz
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drakamama/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LisaNigroArtist/photos/?ref=page_internal&tab=album | https://www.facebook.com/dragonmistress.nigro
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DragonMistresss/videos
