Born in the family of a Russian-Jewish geologist and surrounded by wild nature, beautiful minerals and semi-precious stones, from her childhood Lark had an intimate relationship with the world and developed an ability to hear the inner voices of objects around her. When she arrived in the US she was inspired to use this ability in her art.

Lark’s found-object collages caught the attention of art lovers and gained recognition from art jurors including LA Weekly critic Peter Frank, Sweeney Art Gallery director Tyler Stallings, Santa Monica Museum of Art director Lisa Melandri and MOCA curator Alma Ruiz.

In the past year, Lark’s art has been shown at prestigious juried shows including WCA’s Women Artists on Immigration at the Korean Culture Center, Man’s Inhumanity To Man at Brand Library Art Galleries in Glendale, ASTO Museum International Art Festival in China and Korea, a four man show In Fluence at Pharamaka Gallery curated by Peter Frank, and Interactions at Red Dot Gallery.

The galleries below feature Lark’s collage work from three exhibitions at the Loft: Nature’s Calling, Diverted Destruction Part 2, and Life is 360 Degrees

Nature’s Calling

Nature for me is alive, tender, joyful and suffering, she tells me about her feelings and helps me share mine through art and poetry. She gives me energy, inspiration and healing when I feel physical or emotional pain.

Creating this series “Love in the Garden” I wanted to convey a message I wish we always will remember: “We are an inseparable part of nature”. Bringing reflections of nature into my art, I invite viewers to experience its healing powers.”

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Diverted Destruction Part 2

“For me each object has a voice, whether it’s the rasp of a rusted metal mechanism, the nostalgic whisper of a silk tissue or the rural chatter of a wooden spoon. By putting all of these materials together I orchestrate the music of found objects and thus find my own unique voice.

I can stop right in the middle of my studio after seeing something that attracts my attention. It could be an interesting combination of colorful papers and cardboards. Or just a torn shoe lace tenderly hugging another shoe lace, the two of them starting a new drama for me.

Using the interaction of spiritual meditation and found objects I encourage images to appear from my subconscious. Lately I started taking a more fluid approach to my artwork, including painting on it and just as often abandoning collage altogether to conjure real and imagined landscaped spaces entirely from pigments.

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Life is 360 Degrees

I did not know that I was drawn to using circular shapes in my artworks until one of my friends said to me: “Do you know that in all of your pieces you have something similar? But I will not tell you what, because then you will repeat it intentionally.”

After I promised my friend that I would not, we went through the row of my pictures and there it was in almost each of them – my favorite circle, as a circular sandpaper, bent string, or just a brush stroke that my hand performed without my knowing it.

I concluded that for me a completed circle represents Samsara, the repetition of life and death experiences reflected in the title of this show, Life is 360 Degrees. Liberation from this aspect of the material universe, what Buddhists make their goal, has inspired my work and become my personal ‘road from Samsara.’ Perhaps this is why the circular shapes in my artworks are seldom closed circles – for therein lies my way to Freedom.

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