Clara Lieu
Visiting Lecturer, Art
Visual artist exploring themes of social isolation; printmaker and sculptor.
I investigate ways to visually represent the emotional and physical experience of individual social isolation. I depict social isolation as loneliness that is experienced when physically surrounded by other people, the presence of others being what heightens and intensifies the experience of loneliness for the individual. My current project “Wading,” is composed of related bodies of work involving sculpture, drawing, and printmaking.The images in this project depict figure groups wading in water, which become vehicles to visually articulating the experience of loneliness. Set within an infinite and undefined body of water, scenes of lost figures communicate moments of isolation between figures. I portray loneliness as the experience of feeling unseen and unknown within a group of people.
I work with an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating various methods of drawing, painting, printmaking, and sculpture within one project. I have exhibited work at the International Print Center New York, Bromfield Gallery, the Danforth Museum of Art, the RISD Museum of Art, the Currier Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Boston, and the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts.
At Wellesley, my courses have included Drawing I, Basic Two-Dimensional Design, Color, and Advanced Drawing. I am also a critic at the Rhode Island School of Design in the Division of Foundation Studies and the Illustration Department where I've taught Freshman Drawing, Sophomore Drawing, and Artistic Anatomy.
In addition to teaching, I am also the gallery director of the Jewett Art Gallery, where our goal is to work with students to provide them with insight on the experience of curating and installing their work into a professional art gallery setting. The gallery offers students a behind-the-scenes look at the process of formulating, creating, and installing a visual arts exhibition. As gallery director, I also work on curating exhibitions involving professional artists. This aims to stimulate an ongoing contemporary dialogue and enrich the Art Department curriculum.
As the program coordinator of the Applied Arts Program, I coordinate and organize a series of free, non-credit studio art workshops that are offered throughout the year to all Wellesley students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Topics for workshops vary and generally cover subjects outside of the Art Department curriculum. The workshops offer experience and exposure to new techniques and artists to the Wellesley community.
I am an oboist and have played in several chamber groups and orchestras in New York, Providence, and Boston including: the Greenwich Village Orchestra, the Brown University Orchestra, the Concord Orchestra, and the Melrose Symphony. I currently play assistant principal oboe in the New Philharmonia Orchestra in Newton, Mass.
