Featured photo credit: Anna Paige, The Forum
Anne Labovitz unrolls a 30-to-60-foot-long painted canvas made of Tyvek™ and suddenly the polished gray gallery floor at Plains Art Museum in downtown Fargo is awash in a river of Technicolor pinks and oranges.
“It’s great stuff,” she said, referring to the versatility of the material and not the jaw-dropping art she’s made on it as part of the sprawling canvas displays now hanging from the museum’s atrium and second-floor gallery.
Labovitz is a Minnesota-based artist known internationally for her big, bold visual illuminations on the connections between art, well-being and humanity. Her newest exhibition, “Convergence: Health & Creativity,” was designed exclusively for the Plains Art Museum and opens Saturday.
An opening reception for “Convergence” will be held on Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m. at the museum, with remarks by the artist at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
“Convergence” runs through July 2025.
“This exhibition is an experiment in how color, light and atmosphere can provide a path to well-being and even spark joy,” explains Labovitz. “I wanted to examine how creativity and self-expression are connected to health and happiness, and create a sense of visual optimism.”
The interconnection between art and well-being has fascinated Labovitz for many years, and for her show at the Plains Art Museum she engaged with members of the Fargo-Moorhead health care community to create works that reflect what that looks like at the local level.
Anne Labovitz: North Shore Blue
“There are physical, mental and emotional components to well-being, and I think it comes back to feeling seen and heard,” Labovitz said. “Can color, light and atmosphere provide a pathway toward well-being? That’s what I want to know.”
Listening and responding
In addition to drawing upon her years of research, over a period of five months the artist conducted
more than 40 interviews with local health care professionals and administrators.
“I love when people tell me their truth. It somehow tells me I’m alive,” Labovitz said. “One of my favorite things was when someone said ‘I wanted to be the person I needed when I was a kid,’ and that was pretty beautiful.”
Labovitz painted words and phrases from her interviews onto the accordion-like canvases that hang from the museum atrium and in one of the galleries. She said the interviews were critical to the exhibition for many reasons, but that just allowing people to open up uninhibited by fear of criticism or worse, showed her what she needed to see.
“I find when I do a lot of interviews, the person has told me everything about them. I find that it’s like there’s this floodgate that opens. In a very beautiful way. We don’t listen to each other in our passing, and there’s something about it that is extremely sacred in that way,” Labovitz said. “I’m listening and trying to respond to the art at the same time.”
Context and connection
Local context and creating connections with others is embodied in Labovitz’s creative process and public displays.
A highlight of the Plains exhibition is “The Human Condition,” a large sculpture that hangs from the museum’s Ruth and Seymour Landfield Atrium ceiling in huge, sweeping accordion folds.
Created from 300 linear feet of Tyvek®, the piece is painted on both sides in a saturated palette of blue and purple – colors that reflect Labovitz’s interpretation of her interviews with members of the local community.
“In some ways, for me, color is part of that and it’s why I make such big things. If you provide the moment of contemplation, wonder, curiosity, pause, and I believe color can give us something in that way,” she said.
Muses and motivation
Another notable highlight of the show is the interactive installation, “Well-Being Wall II.” This participatory section is an invitation for visitors to create their own artwork and display it as part of the exhibition.
Guests are asked to answer the question, “What does well-being mean to you?” Then, using six-inch painted squares created by the artist, they will write or draw their answers on the square, and then add them to a hanging grid.
“The commentary wall then becomes an ever-evolving element of the exhibition, and is a visual representation of a way to look at someone else, to see them,” she said. “Because the busier we are, the more we run around, the less we connect.”
Labovitz’s inspiration for the wall sparked her motivation for the larger installations in the exhibition and is based on the wise teachings of one of her first mentors: her grandmother.
“My grandma would recite poetry to me and quote [existential philosopher] Martin Buber,” she said. “She was wonderful and is a muse to me.”
Labovitz said her grandmother seemed to understand the internal connections Labovitz herself explores in her work, including that which makes us more human to one another.
“My grandmother would often paraphrase Buber by saying that when you truly see someone and they see you, it’s a fleeting moment of human recognition. I think my life’s work is all about providing those moments, by driving hard for that internal connection,” she said.
Connect with Anne Labovitz
This article is part of a content partnership with Forum Communications. The Arts Partnership thanks FCC for supporting local art.
