Marne Lucas

Marne Lucas was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and was raised in Portland, Oregon. She currently lives and works in New York City. Lucas is a photographer and multi-disciplinary artist whose investigations of nature, culture, and the body frequently employ sensual metaphor with humor and use photography, video, and installation to present unique aesthetic and social philosophies. Lucas collaborates extensively behind and in front of the camera, and is known for her stylistic portraiture. She also works as a freelance commercial photographer.

She is currently working on Bardo, a multimedia project exploring creativity as a form of spiritual end-of-life care, illuminating the positive effects of art as mind and body are integrated and coupled with relics from those journeys. Working with hospice patients to express artistic endeavors that best represent their legacy, her aim is to help the dying attain peace and acceptance in the face of death.

Recent video work includes a multichannel, infrared (IR) video installation titled Incident Energy (2013–14) with Jacob Pander which used heat-sensitive imaging cameras to reference surveillance culture and the fragility of human existence. Range Phenomenology, associated with military, border, or aerial surveillance, visualizes the surreal beauty of heat signatures radiating from the corporeal, offering a glimpse of our temporal coalescence of ancient stellar energy.

For the past several years she has worked closely with collaborator Bruce Conkle on their invented genre of ‘Eco-Baroque’ art, creating elaborate nature-based inspired installations and sculptures made from recycled or natural materials. Exploring nature and regionalism with a wry reverence, they present eco-based philosophies about humanity. Together they exhibited in the 2012 Mongolia 360• Land Art Biennial, the Portland2010 Oregon Art Biennial, and at The Art Gym at Marylhurst University.

Lucas exhibits in solo and group shows in the U.S. and internationally, has participated in an invitational CentralTrak artist residency and a Caldera artist residency, and has received RACC project grants in 2006 and collabora-tively in 2008 and 2012. She made a public art commission for the Portland State University Smith Memorial Student Union funded by a Public Art + Residency Project in conjunction with the State of Oregon Percent for Art Program. Lucas also has sculptural work in the permanent collections of the National Mongolian Modern Art Museum, the Portland State University, and the Smith Memorial Student Union Public Art + Residency Project. Her photography is in the Portland Art Museum and the Terry Toedtemeier Memorial Collection.