Artwork copyright Lynn Basa. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Artwork copyright Lynn Basa. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, 2017.

Five Citizens: Leo, 2000

Lynn Basa
American

Location: Maplewood K-8 Parent Co-op School, Edmonds

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Five Citizens: Leo is part of a series of tapestry "portraits" by artist Lynn Basa. To create the portraits, Basa asks each subject a series of questions and designs the artwork using symbolic colors and forms to represent their answers. For example, Basa notes that Leo, a young boy, had been catching frogs prior to his interview, which inspired the silhouette of a frog composed as the background of this piece.

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with .

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Artist Lynn Basa creates public art sculptures, conceptual paintings, works on paper, textiles, and assemblages. She lived in Seattle from 1977 to 2002 and credits that time as her formative years as an artist. She worked for the Seattle Arts Commission and as an art reviewer for the Bellevue Journal-American. She was also a curator for the art collections at Safeco Insurance (1981-1984) and the University of Washington Medical Center (1984-1999). Basa has been a full-time artist since 1999. Basa received a Bachelor of Arts degree in ceramics from Indiana University in 1977 and a Master of Public Administration degree in public art policy and administration from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1981. She went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree in studio art from the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016. She also studied at the Gobelin Tapestry Workshop in France. She currently lives and works in Chicago.