LIZ LANE GALLERY

I  making a run for Hoover City Council. I feel called to be a good neighbor. Learn more here- https://www.lizlane4hcc.com/

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Community is what makes life worth living. I'm lucky enough to have several different but overlapping types of community. Community among family, community among neighbors and friends, and community in the professional sector, especially among the arts. The individual relationships and overarching connections between all these people creates joy and love and instils the belief that we are powerful and anything is possible when we find commonalities and universalities amongst us. These connections inspire my work- our universal connections to nature, to time, and to each other. My art often feels like the intersection of love, pain, prayers, needs and joy. 

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For most of my adult life, I have been mainly the observer and story teller amongst these connections. Each brushstroke writes these stories in a tangible, vernacular free language. My goal as an artist is for viewers to feel the connections in pure form- free from social and economic constraints and rules- just as the free expressions that they are. 

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While I love the role of story teller, I feel called to have a more active voice in the construction and protection of these communities. This calling has been around my entire life- once taking the form of anxiety, sometimes crippling, but as I get older and feel more secure in my own being, the calling has demanded more action. I will always be first and foremost the story teller, for these stories must be told in the way only abstract expressionism can accomplish. But there are too many injustices, too much hurt, too much suffering, to not step into the narrative. The call to be an artist not just of the story, but an artist within and of the community- is too strong to ignore. 

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Figuring out this new role has not been easy. Determining how this extension of self will fit in with all my other titles- mother, wife, friend, daughter, professional artist- has made me very aware of something that can feel both freeing and limiting- time. Time is the true keeper of rules and while I wish it didn't keep us, Time is the keeper of all. 

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The balance of what we care about, and how much our bodies can physically do, is incredibly real. 

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I have taken a step back from the business of selling other's art to focus on the creation of art.  At one point I had two retail galleries in different states. I had employees and represented multiple artists for many years. I'm so glad I started young in this adventure, opening my first location at 27, giving me years to let my carer transform. All of it has been hard, all has been beautiful, and all of it is in constant evolution. 

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No longer will I have a retail gallery. I will, for the time, only have a studio practice. This transition has been long and probably over thought to those who know me well. I have worked in retail in some form or another since I was 15.  I appreciate all those that clock the hours to run their small businesses and hold space in the community for the local makers and employees and customers. They spend countless hours working to keep dreams alive when it sometimes seems impossible, paying others before they pay themselves. But this is no longer my dream. I had to close this door to open the next. 

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This next phase of my life looks very similar to the last- as in I am still a vessel for creative thought and action- but instead of in buildings and retail spaces, in the studio and out in the community. 

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The learning curve will always be high and I will always be on it. I was asked and have agreed to do something I never imagined- I am running for City Council in Hoover, Alabama. While I do not know if I will win, this feels like the right next step to learning about how to serve this community that has served me. It is a calling to be not just the story teller, but part of the story. 

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Everyone that decides to run for public office comes in with their own experiences and world views. I suspect, though, that my experiences in life, and my reasons for running, are far different than the typical person who decides to run. 

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This morning as I write this, I have intervened in bath time arguments, helped build a blanket fort, made breakfast for my family, and pulled play crowns out of tangled hair. I am a mother. I am a woman. Our representation in positions of leadership is absurdly low. It doesn't however mean we aren't here. Women show up, especially black and brown women.  Whenever I go to political action meetings or when I have hosted them, it is primarily women. Not only that, women are the one's holding down the schools, the community events, cooking and cleaning and organizing at the churches- we are here. We are the queen's of invisible labor. We need however, to be seen, respected and given leadership roles in our own communities at a much higher rate. I'm watching my two elementary school girls, one playing a game on her tablet, the other painting with lime green and turquoise blue at the kitchen counter- and thinking, I want to do everything as their mother to make sure they are given more respect than to just be invisiable laborors, making sure the world that isn't designed for us, turns. 

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