The Past Will Guide Us Forward

Lori Raye Erickson might not have had an idyllic childhood, but she always received encouragement from her Mother to pursue art. She desperately needed an outlet and showed promise artistically, so every summer she studied at the Des Moines Art Center. By the time she graduated high school, she was employed at a print shop free-hand designing what would be printed. She primarily produced images of sprint cars, but it was there she learned that she could draw- just about anything- really well. With encouragement from her high school art teacher, by the time she graduated, she had offers from two well-known art schools. She chose the Kansas City Art Institute.

Erickson has played an integral role in the Kansas City supporting artists for thirty years. She maintained a studio at the Hobb’s building in the West Bottoms for twenty of those years, organizing and producing the quarterly Hobbs Open Studios for most of that time. Erickson has received the Charlotte Street Award, was featured in New American Paintings, Avenue of the Arts, several other national publications, and has work in museum as well as numerous private collections. Now enjoying a residency with the coveted Studios Inc. program located in the East Crossroads district, she is hitting a new level of productivity in her career.

Erickson has always enjoyed painting animals and creating balanced, dimensional abstract works of art. Many people know her mainly for those works, but much of her work is guided by a deep craving for justice. This desire has driven an exploration of the abused, discarded, and mistreated for decades. She presented transpeople in all of their glory in an elevated, worshipful, beautiful way, when being a trans person was hardly spoken about. She approached the abuse of boy scouts long before the organization admitted wrongdoing, or filed for bankruptcy. She has explored the abuse of power in the Catholic church, and the United States’ simultaneous appropriation of Native American oil rights and their symbolism.

After the last Presidential election, she presented us with a visual retrospective - her perspective - on several Presidents and cultural political icons. Erickson explains, “We’ve been at war our entire lives. If not a military action, we’re at war with our neighbors, ourselves, and nature.” Her tormented obsession with fairness continues. Approaching all of these polemic subjects utilizing graphic allure, vibrant color, dimensionality, perfect proportion, visual balance, deceptive simplicity, and oftentimes levity, she deftly explores not one, but all of our precious, useless constructs with great care.

In this new body of work, Erickson examines contemporary evangelism in-depth, exploring that relationship to immigration, white blindness, power, and notion of superiority. She continues, “I’m boggled by it all: the interpretation of the bible elevating and worshipping greed. We’ve destroyed the image of what Jesus was...he was definitely black or brown.” Through this work she argues that America’s history of systemic racism sheltered more recently by white evangelical moral relativism landed us in this pivotal moment. Her hope is that by deeply examining our history, ourselves, our relationship to the Divine, while cultivating empathy, respect, and compassion toward one another we can find a curative path forward- together.

~ by Christel Highland

Additional works available via the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center through their website.

No Trespassing, 2020

The Bigger the Cross the Bigger the Scoundrel, 2020

Align, Divine & Eisenstein Prime, 2020