THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610070187
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: 76 lines
Edna Lazaron makes books.
Not the conventional, mass-produced variety. One-of-a-kind books, hand-wrought, kaleidoscopically detailed, singular. Artist's books.
Each embodying a theme and peppered with the piquant spice of prose:
``ONE MUST APPREHEND THE BOOK AS A STRUCTURE, IDENTIFYING ITS ELEMENTS AND UNDERSTANDING THEIR FUNCTION.''
For Lazaron, 73, a book is more than a mere strongbox of words. It is a tactilely rich collection of intense visual impressions, a living storyboard, a frozen epiphany. Take Entropy, her large-scale, iridescent meditation on the inexorable tendency of time and human endeavor to wind down.
``YOU DON'T NEED A CLOCK TO TELL WHICH WAY THE HANDS ARE TURNING.''
That's elegiac. But celebratory is Respect the Land, an ecological encomium of layered surfaces in homage to Tsonakwa and other Native Americans who well understood that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed. Not always for the good, making us conservators.
``RESPECT THE LAND - TAKE CARE OF IT AND IT WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU.''
Lazaron's mesmerizing imagery is currently on display at the Virginia Wesleyan College Library, 1584 Wesleyan Dr., Norfolk, through Nov. 11, shown in the company of the watercolor work of her daughter.
Polly Lazaron, 40, a Richmond artist, approaches through her ``Thresholds'' vision the relationship between moments of time and timelessness - a metaphor for watercolor itself, at once so mutable in process and so fixed at the end.
What connects their perceptions?
``We share ruins,'' says Edna.
Romantic reminders of mutability - and our own short, temporary tenure on this ground.
Stonehenge in the snow.
``OUR BLOOD IS SEA WATER: IT REMEMBERS THE TIDES, THE MOON'S PULL.''
Edna Lazaron lives in an arboreal home on Argyle Avenue in Norfolk. The house, draped in flora without and packed in paintings within, is itself a work of art. It's a three-story studio.
And as the house is art, so is its mistress. Lazaron, whitening of hair, almost egret-like in unaffected elegance, has even made art of her ailments, in a life-size collage of her body bristling with medical records. A survivor of cancer, the possessor of a pacemaker, Lazaron has at once respect for mortality and a dark sense of humor about it.
``ARMAMENTS DO NOT CAUSE WARS - AMBITIONS DO.''
A world-traveler, she first began combining words with images after a visit to Altamira, Spain, where she saw the fabled cave paintings. What did they mean? Her own acrylic creations, which called for a variety of perspectives clustered around themes, seemed to open themselves to the clarifying dimension of language.
Her artist's books open like Dutch doors on sudden exotic territory, from penumbral moonscapes to the deserted boats and outbuildings of a bygone Eastern Shore. One is invited to unbind and open these books, run hands over their iridescent surfaces, feel as well as see. Experiencing Lazaron's art is like unlocking so many lap desks, the principal contents of which are ideas, some warm, some white-hot.
She misses her husband of 52 years, Morris, who passed away last May. She instinctively meets loss with its obverse, sharing. She is proud to show work with her daughter.
``We used to punish Polly for painting on walls,'' Lazaron notes, ``and now she's getting paid for it.''
Art, like life, is a found object.
``LOOK - SEE - RELATE - TRANSLATE; THERE'S ALWAYS A MESSAGE.''
Joyce Howell, associate professor of art history at Virginia Wesleyan and curator for this exhibit, is an appreciator of Lazaron the person as well as the artist.
``She doesn't play games,'' reports Howell. ``She's just honest. You know you're going to have a good time with her because what you see is what you get.''
Lazaron's advice to the aspiring young artist is as refreshingly down-to-earth as she is:
``The very first thing to do is take a business course. It's the last thing you're taught. But you need to be able to support yourself.`` MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communications professor at Virginia
Wesleyan College. by CNB