PROJECT DEVELOPMENT NAOMI LAWRENCE
2024/2025 PROJECT DEVELOPMENT ARTIST NAOMI LAWRENCE
Art Lives Here, Founder and Chief Curator Connie Lee and Naomi have been working together since 2016. Lee helped the artist bring her monumental installation, Superbloom, to Thomas Jefferson Park in collaboration with Harlem Needle Arts. Superbloom is on view October 2024 through September 2025.
2024/2025 Project Development Artist Naomi Lawrence
Originally from England, UK, the self-described fiber artist is based in New York City. Her work has been installed in public parks, educational facilities and public spaces throughout the city but is most visible in her own community, the Northern Manhattan neighborhoods of East and Central Harlem.
The artist works primarily with acrylic yarn to create large scale 2-Dimensional art installations. Her work is freeform, she does not follow a pattern. Designing from photos of nature which are often enlarged so that she can reproduce the subtle changes in color and texture that add a depth of field to her 2D work. Her monumental installations take several months to produce but are usually approved by the city to stay in place for up to one year becoming part of the urban landscape. They are then washed, restored and often gifted to have a second life in a new location. In 2014, the artist who studied Floral Design at the University of Arts in London, created Blue Iris, a site-specific art installation that endeared her to East Harlem residents who embraced the work as a gift of flowers to the community. The artist has been creating floral and nature inspired installations ever since.
Superbloom is now on view in Thomas Jefferson Park.
In California there is a “Superbloom” that happens every 2 to 3 years after record breaking winter rains. This surplus of nutrients leads to a spectacular show of spring wildflowers across barren deserts which can at times be visible from space.
With Superbloom, Harlem based artist Naomi Lawrence will replicate the natural occurring event from the other side of the U.S. by crocheting acrylic yarns into oversized wildflowers. The artists freehand style allows her to capture the subtle shifts of color that happen in nature. The vibrant burst of colors will come to life in East Harlem. The ordinary chain link fence will be transformed with crochet California poppies, blue, purple, arroyo lupine, and bright yellow fiddlenecks, and wildflowers that are known to be part of this phenomenon.
