Vinyl records and steamrollers inspire SCC art instructor
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Jeanne Lorenz
Using an old copy of Joy Division's "She's Lost Control," Jeanne Lorenz has taken an old record and created a unique art piece out of it.
Mark Beierly, Staff writer
May 9, 2012
Filed under Arts & Entertainment, Features, Local, Profiles
Artists have many tools to work with. Most notable artists use a brush for their work, while others use tools to craft some abstract sculpture for their work. Solano College art teacher Jeanne Lorenz would rather use a steamroller on one of her art projects.
Printmaking, Lorenz’s artistic expertise, is essentially etching a plate painting onto a press. “The students really love it,” Lorenz said. Lorenz has been teaching at Solano for four years. During one of her color design classes, Lorenz challenged her students to make four paintings of daffodils using a handmade tool instead of a brush.
Lorenz’s art work can be seen everywhere from the video pages of YouTube to the Oakland Art Gallery known as “The Compound Gallery.”
It’s in The Compound Gallery where some of Lorenz’s finest work is there in the form of vinyl records. Lorenz would use a classic vinyl record of musicians such as AC/DC or LL Cool J and craft a colorful art piece shaped like a record. In the past few years, Lorenz has had group artist exhibitions in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.
Lorenz’s latest showcase will be this week at the Dixon May Fair, where she will use a steamroller to craft and make large-scale printmaking projects in the fair’s Solano Steamroller Smackdown. The 12-ton black and white steamroller will be rolling through the fair and spinning inky imagery created by participants. All prints and t-shirts produced will be for sale, with proceeds benefiting the Solano college art department.
Lorenz and her students will each make and steamroll three prints. The theme Lorenz is striving for her students is “country symbolism.”
