Lisa Nilsson

Lisa Nilsson is a visual artist who grew up in Avon, Massachusetts. She found early inspiration in the makers-of-things in her family, including her father, a retired graphic designer, and his brother, an illustrator. Members of her family sewed, painted houses and watercolors, repaired car bodies, and mixed colors for false teeth. In the 1980s, Lisa attended the Rhode Island School of Design and mostly learned about making illustrations. She received a BFA, and after art school worked first as an illustrator at American Greetings in Cleveland and later as a freelancer for Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, and the Utne Reader. In the winter of 2003, Lisa moved to North Adams, Massachusetts to live and work in a recently renovated textile mill now inhabited by working artists. At the mill, Lisa began making small-scale assembled works that brought together many of her lifes collection of things, artistic skills and interests. They were shown, among other places, at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2010 Lisa took her only extended period away from the art-making studio to attend the medical assisting program at her local technical school. At McCann, Lisa’s life-long interest in anatomy and cool-looking medical things grew a bit more informed. It was also in 2010 that Lisa began working with paper, quilling and anatomical cross-sections. She continues to further this body of work that was first shown at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She is represented in New York City by Pavel Zoubok Gallery.