Acrpost: A Project of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres

Event Description

Join us Saturday October 7 at 7pm for the opening of Lashen Orendorff's exhibition Apparitions: sometimes the shadows speak.
The opening night includes an accompanying noise concert.
The exhibition runs until Oct. 29th!
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I always feel a haunting whenever I walk through abandoned industrial sites or
those in between, unused and forgotten spaces; a haunting that informs my work
of giving waste materials new form. All of the steel used to forge the pieces in this
collection are sourced from wasteland sites and interstitial spaces, I wanted to
take these pieces of salvaged scrap steel and draw out the phantoms beneath the
rusted surface. In the works created for “Apparitions” we enter Into an
exploration of surreal figures and faces, distorted fragments of memory and
industrial history woven into textural experiments in forged steel.
My process follows in the rich tradition of Blacksmithing, where the steel is
heated to malleability in a forge and formed to shape by hand over the anvil with
hammers and other tools. Even though modern machinery and tooling is
employed, much of the techniques and equipment used remain basically
unchanged for the last 4000 years.

BIO:
Lashen Orendorff
I am an artist, blacksmith, educator and interdisciplinary craftsperson currently
living in the Slocan Valley.
I come from a background rooted in noise music and performance art, DIY punk,
and experimental art making. My explorations in sculpture and metal work began
while studying in the Sculptural Metals program at Selkirk College in 2014.
More recently I am one of the founding members of Blackbird Arts Society, a
small collective and non-profit arts organization based in the Kootenays, that
works to further creative dialogue while promoting and organizing local arts
events with a focus on the industrial arts.
Throughout my creative process, I find myself intrigued by the materialities of
steel; the texture, weight and feel beneath the hammer, almost as a realization of
some autonomy as co-collaborator in informing and creating a final piece. Much
of my work explores the liminal zones where the realm of the surreal and the
human condition intersect.