About
LISA VANDEGRIFT DAVALA began her career as a mural painter, architectural restorer and sign writer, and has been a life-long musician. She was given the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Architecture and Design by Irish President Patrick Hillery. As a visual artist, she exhibited in galleries and museums in the US and Europe including Gimpel Fils London, Ducal Palace Leningrad, and The Berman Museum of Art (12-year retrospective exhibition). Since the 1980’s the major part of her attention has been given to the relationship between the marks we make and their ability to be containers of our human and cultural spirit. She has referred to this phenomenon as “The Calligraphy of the Spirit”. Her film “…for peace comes dropping slow…” is a celebration of this idea, bringing a human presence to a meaningful space, and inscribing it with the line and mark of poetic light.
Over the last decade her work increased in both visual and technological scale to include a projected, larger-than-life, movable book room and an artist’s illustrated book designed for the iPod. She is presently working on a free-form holographic projection andjust completed the second “SLIGLOW” live, filmed, public light event.
Lisa was the recipient of the Vira Heinz Award, Pittsburgh; First Prize, Fenderesky Open Exhibition, Belfast Northern Ireland; and The Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Award, New York. Her works are in the permanent collection of MoMA, The Berman Museum of Art, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The National Library of Ireland and The Boyle Civic Collection.
