Ideal Home: Elizabeth Alexander & Kasey Lou Lindley at OCA

This August, Ogden Contemporary Arts presents Ideal Home, featuring distinct bodies of work by multidisciplinary artists Elizabeth Alexander (Winston-Salem, North Carolina) and Kasey Lou Lindley (Salt Lake City, Utah). Together, the artists’ work represents unique processes in paper, collage and installation art, with connecting concepts that reflect on the idealism of home and environment in past and present-day America.

Elizabeth Alexander’s Objects of Desire explores the American idealism of home and the ways in which domestic perfection is at odds with the reality of humanity. Her installations utilize nostalgic, home-related objects that were once coveted symbols of success such as wallpaper, porcelain ware, and distinct furniture pieces in ways that insert chaotic beauty into spaces of domestic harmony. Her work unpacks the social, cultural and psychological implications of American idealism around domesticity, success and safety, representing home as a space that “serves both as a projection of our ideal self and one that houses our darkest and brightest moments.”

The ideal American home also includes its exterior environment, which Kasey Lou Lindley addresses with her body of work, Future Gardens. Current drought conditions in Utah and the west are challenging our societal obsession with manicured lawns and residential green space. Lindley’s watercolor paintings, digital collages and immersive video installation represent an ideal future for American gardens and landscapes, centered around imagery of drought-tolerant foliage from Utah and around the world. Lindley’s work examines place-based environmental issues with an optimistic lens, while begging the question: what can humans do to be more responsible stewards of our local landscapes and earthly home?