Crafting elaborate sculptural installations, Lee wrestles with his sense of self as a Hmong-American artist and community organizer

2023 McKnight Visual Arts Fellow: Sieng Lee

Banner image: Joyce Lyon,&nbsp;Tiber / Tevere: Flow and Time, I, II, III, IV (detail). Oil stick on Ampersand panels, each 36 x 24&rdquo;, 108&rdquo; overall. All photos by Laura Laptsevitch.

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It is impossible to view <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/to-the-river-or-joyce-lyon" target="_blank">To the River</a> without engaging in some kind of sensory experience. For Joyce Lyon, this exhibition represents twenty years of memories and encounters, gathered from revisiting a single place: Otricoli, a little town in central Italy. Presented by<a href="https://www.formandcontent.org/exhibits/sund-dr9yx" target="_blank"> Form+Content Gallery</a>, this collection of new oil stick drawings captures the Tiber, or il Tevere, a river flowing beneath the Umbrian town. Lyon depicts the road leading to the river, a Roman road more than two thousand years old. Beyond the ancient memories tied to the land, this place is also home to friendships, relationships, and personal stories for the artist. To the River is a meditation on shared history, collective memory, and personal experience shaped by il Tevere.

Stepping into the gallery, I wonder: what does this space hold? It is not about individual blades of grass, brush, or a particular tree. It is about the whole &mdash; the essence of a place in flux. I think of landscape, and then I think of To the River. Landscape painters often preserve a particular moment. But this exhibition does something different. It articulates multiple impending moments, persisting moments &mdash; the ongoing change of a place. It&rsquo;s dipping your finger into water and watching the ripples double over, waiting as the rings expand, doubling, tripling, until they disappear entirely. This is the sensibility of To the River. It embodies an enduring memory, an attempt to hold the uncontainable force of time. Dipping your finger in water, nothing else matters. Looking at these oil stick drawings, I&rsquo;m inside the work.

A word that defines To the River is impermanence. Each panel of Tiber / Tevere: Flow and Time, I, II, III, IV, the exhibition&#39;s centerpiece, presents the same portion of the river at different moments in time. The diagonal of the horizon unifies the four parts. Falling or rising, in Flow and Time, the transience of the water is palpable. The undulating lines, the specks of light, the water&rsquo;s movement brings us to the power of the moment.

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<img alt="Four vertical paintings of a river's surface hang in a gallery" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/25572544-5d05-42f9-b74b-657da8f14969/25572544-5d05-42f9-b74b-657da8f14969.full.jpg" /><img alt="Pastel painting of a river" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/5cb89ec7-3e8c-422f-b86b-a6cd057cee4f/5cb89ec7-3e8c-422f-b86b-a6cd057cee4f.full.jpg" />Top: Joyce Lyon, Tiber / Tevere: Flow and Time, I, II, III, IV (detail). Oil stick on Ampersand panels, each 36 x 24&rdquo;, 108&rdquo; overall. Bottom: Joyce Lyon, The Reach, 2025. Oil stick on Arches oil paper, 38.5 x 51.5&quot;.

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In the gallery, I find myself fully present. I stand before The Reach, and feel as though I&rsquo;m in Otricoli, walking the Roman road up to il Tevere. The handling of paper and oil stick is quick, fresh, and deliberate. The treatment of the light, the gestures, the swelling of the river &mdash; it&rsquo;s vibrant, it&rsquo;s breathing, it&rsquo;s alive.&nbsp;

There is a physicality to the water, a brashness and fullness transcribed through the oil stick. I look at the water, then I look at the light: the light is bouncing and vibrating against the picture plane &mdash; against a still, potent frame.&nbsp;

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<img alt="Pastel painting of a river" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/0059d333-7073-41e0-839d-911a8bfd4659/0059d333-7073-41e0-839d-911a8bfd4659.full.jpg" />Joyce Lyon, The River, the Mirror / il Fiume, lo Specchio, 2025. Oil stick and oil on Arches Huile paper, 38.5 x 51.5&rdquo;.

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Across the gallery, its counterpart, The River, the Mirror / il Fiume, lo Specchio, shows a different river: equally vibrant, but still. Very still.

I noticed the blue instantly. It conjures both physical and internal landscapes. The water is an icy turquoise, a blue I notice when I&rsquo;m alone. I see it stretched across the morning sky, reflected in windows, and in glimpses on walks. I see it in quiet moments. This is what I find with this particular blue, the soft periwinkle and subdued aqua &mdash; it facilitates the stillness, the calm atmosphere. The River, the Mirror / il Fiume, lo Specchio&nbsp;is its own quiet pocket of the world, at the nexus of place and memory.

Some things you don&rsquo;t notice unless you&rsquo;re quiet. With these drawings, I&rsquo;m brought to silence. It is the wild phenomenon where a held breath makes your world both larger and smaller &mdash; an experience I find when viewing Lyon&rsquo;s drawings. It expands your world, it lets you be present &mdash; it&rsquo;s connective.&nbsp; 
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<img alt="Pastel painting of trees" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/624cd315-8221-48b6-98ab-f24d3519c64b/624cd315-8221-48b6-98ab-f24d3519c64b.full.jpg" />Joyce Lyon, River Guardians I, 2025. Oil on Ampersand panel, 30 x 40&rdquo;.

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To the left of The River, the Mirror / il Fiume, lo Specchio&nbsp;is River Guardians I. If you look closely and long enough, it feels as if you could bury your hand in the vines. In the texture of River Guardians I the leaves hang and move like a carefully coordinated dance.&nbsp;

The breath of the drawing, the tree, the air, the sky, feels as if Lyon worked with the earth itself. Even with the land, trees, and gesture, an ever-present thread in To the River is a recurrence of the blue &mdash; shifting, always carrying with it light, memory, and time.

Memory is difficult to place. It can only be understood through a very human, vulnerable framework. Perhaps memory would be a dream if you could not return &mdash; Lyon returns twice a year. To return to a memory-dense place is to spiritualize it, to add to the collective memory it already holds.&nbsp;

Lyon&rsquo;s To the River is not just a meditation on place, but on the ways we inhabit and remember it. There is a convergence of past and present. What it means to gather and to return makes this river even more special. It&rsquo;s remarkable how a place, however transient the encounter, can pull you back in time. To the River envelopes us in a sincere, immediate, and living experience of time folding over itself.&nbsp;◼︎&nbsp;

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<a href="https://www.formandcontent.org/exhibits/sund-dr9yx" target="_blank">To the River</a> is on view at Form+Content Gallery through April 19. To see more of Joyce Lyon&#39;s work, visit <a href="https://www.formandcontent.org/joyce-lyon" target="_blank">Form+Content</a>.

<a href="https://www.lauralaptsevitch.com/bio" target="_blank">Laura Laptsevitch</a> is an art educator, art historian, and current gallery intern at Form+Content Gallery.

In her new oil stick drawings, Joyce Lyon revisits and remembers the Tiber River

'To the River': A Meditation on Place and Memory

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