Frances Lightbound

b. 1989

Frances LightboundFrances Lightbound is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, where she is a Lecturer in Printmedia at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at galleries including the John David Mooney Foundation, Chicago; Paris, London, Hong Kong Gallery, Chicago; Blue Star Contemporary, San Antonio; Snehta, Athens Greece; MONACO, St Louis; 68projects, Berlin. Frances Lightbound was awarded a Luminarts Visual Arts Fellowship in 2017. Originally from Sheffield, England, she received an MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2016), and a BA (Hons) from Glasgow School of Art, Scotland (2012).

My work explores the materiality of architecture, focusing on the intersections between public and private space, and the relationships among bodies, built environments, language, and landforms. I work between two- and three- dimensional media to create site-responsive pieces that evoke the subjectivity of bodily and spatial experiences, unraveling the edges of seemingly fixed systems of organization and meaning.

Architecture serves as a lens through which I examine our everyday environments and our relationships with them. It is also a medium that can challenge our lived experience of time, existing both temporally and materially in a space between bodily and geological time.

In my practice, I approach printmaking as a spatial and time-based medium. I frequently work with variable editions and print-based installations, treating prints, like the built environment, as unfixed, subjective, and always in progress.

My sculptural work engages directly with the spaces in which it is encountered, prompting a reconsideration of the familiar. By reconfiguring commonplace materials such as chain-link fencing, commercial vinyl floor tile, and window frames, I invite audiences to bring their own associations to these fragments and pause to consider them anew.

Recent works, including heavyweight rubbings and hand embossings, navigate the boundaries between two, three,
and four dimensions. Using graphite sticks, I create sculptural monotypes that engage with a site or surface through sustained tactile interaction. This process builds up a heavy mineral deposit, resulting in an indexical impression that is also infused with the particularities, inclinations, and energies of my subjective experience at a specific moment in time.