Artist Lindsay Lion Lord and her husband, musician David Lord, moved to Montreal two years ago so Lindsay could pursue a master’s degree. But they’ve returned home to Wichita and found inspiration from the creative networks here and the wide open spaces to work in. For this month’s ArtWorks, Torin Andersen has more.
“Oh, it was a great experience. I met some people to play with. I got slightly involved with the music community there. Even getting to gigs, you have to deal with public transportation or Uber or whatever. So I, especially in the winter tended to not even pursue playing much because it seemed too much of a hassle compared to what I'm used to here.”
“For me, it felt like living at an amusement park like you like it. It's super fun. You're like, whoo, everywhere you look, it's beautiful, shiny things, really nice people. But after a while, it starts to be too much. It just became very clear that moving back was the right decision for us at this time. And because my program does have flexibility. So, I'm doing my thesis now. And I'll you know, I'll have to have a solo show in Montreal at the end of this year. One of the benefits of living in Wichita is it's really affordable. So we can live here and have like a home base here and I can still participate in that network as I need to. And as I want to.”
“And for me, I did meet some great musicians, I had a trio playing my original music so I was happy with the connections I made. But most of my professional activities would still happen here.”
“I would like to move away from using synthetic dyes in my practice, and I'd like to be able to grow my own dyestuffs. So having access to some space to do that is like, that's really appealing to me, I have a huge studio here and it’s really affordable.”
“I don't really feel like where I'm at impacts my music that much. When I go into my creative, like creation space or whatever. I'm just doing my process and it's kind of a world that exists outside of where I'm at.”
“It's really important to us to be close to family. And we kind of learned being far away how important that was. So we have our networks here. And we also have professional networks outside of Wichita. And because of all of our support here, we're able to sustain all of those networks. We're able to be here, be with our families. I can grow my dyestuffs, we can grow food, we can have, like a very peaceful life. But then David can go to LA, I can go to Montreal, we can do all of those things living here.”
“We haven't really settled in yet. We're still living out of our suitcases and we're working on the house that we're moving into.”
“It feels very much like when we visit at Christmas time because we're living in like a temporary space, I guess it's it's much easier to get groceries, getting things that you need, doesn't take so much of your physical energy every day because you don't have to carry every single item with your own body. It's great to see the sunset.”
