Nate Lewis
From the Biological Tapestries series
About:
Born and raised outside of Pittsburgh in the town of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, currently living and working between DC and NYC.
Nate began his working career as a critical care registered nurse, he received a BSN in nursing in 2009 and has since then worked in a medical-surgical intensive care unit, a stroke unit, a neuroscience-surgical intensive care unit and a surgical recovery unit. He worked as a critical care registered nurse for nine years. He began pursuing the arts in 2008, first it was music, violin. He then started pursuing the visual arts in 2010. A self-taught artist, drawing inspiration from anatomy, physiology, disease processes and his nursing experience as a care taker of patients and their family members he creates intricate 2-3d sculptures out of single sheets of paper that visually combines the aesthetics of drawing, sculpture, etching, embroidery, and textiles. His approach to his work is often instinctive and free while at the same time surgically precise.
From the Biological Tapestries series
From the Self Portrait series
From the Self Portrait series
From the Social Patterns series
From the Hidden Tensions series
Statements:
Tensions in Tapestries
We all have a lens in which we see through. Our lens is distilled by our patterns of seeing and thinking which continually refines our lens. The lens we come to form becomes our filter.
Using figurative and portrait style images I sculpt patterns and textures that reveal unseen tensions on and within bodies representative of the past, present, and future. the physical and the spiritual, the tangible and intangible.
Internal, as well as external influences come to refine our patterns of thinking, seeing, interacting and loving. Through the use of presence and absence, textures and distortion I aim to challenge the filters we hold that dictate our views and our actions.
Through an attentive, intentional process of sculpting patterns and terrains of texture on bodies, I seek for this work to mirror the intentionality and consistency it can take in ones patterns of thinking and seeing to hold an empathetic lens.
Biological Tapestries, Self Portrait Sculpted Photos
Biological Tapestries is a visual reflection of the competing elements of genetics, the microbiological world, human intervention through medical care, and appeals to the divine which all have a stake in determining the outcome of patients in critical care units.
As a critical care registered nurse I desired to become emotionally porous. I sought for the impersonal experiences of patients and families to become personal and intimate. This resulted in distilling untested qualities of my character and further illuminating areas of my identity.
By sculpting my body with repetitive cellular cuts I make visible these unseen competing elements, creating textures and movement that mirror the internal transformations of the patients, the individuals who were emotionally invested in these patients, and myself.
I aim for this work to show the power of freedom within boundaries, and to question to what lengths are we willing to lay aside our pride, comfort, and fear to make room for empathy, within intimate and larger social contexts.(text website artist)
See also: http://natelewisart.com/